
Hook. 



PRr:sKNTi;n nv 



PRESIDENT 
WILSON 

HIS PROBLEMS AND HIS POLICY 
AN ENGLISH VIEW 



H. WILSON HARRIS 



NEW YORK 

FREDERICK A. STOKES CO 

FOURTH AVENUE 
1917 






'H3 



i) 



TO 

MY WIFE 



FOREWORD TO AMERICAN READERS 

If this book has any value in America it will be 
as the embodiment of what I think I may. claim 
to be a typical English view of American politics. 
The term typical perhaps needs a little qualifica- 
tion. I cannot pretend to be entirely free from 
a certain pro-American bias, though I hope I 
have not allowed it to colour what I have written. 

(^uite apart from the circumstances of this 
war, I am profoundly convinced that America 
and Great Britain have a great destiny to work 
out in common which they can never accom- 
plish separately. If that is so it is of the first 
importance that the two countries should know 
each other better and understand each other 
better. Americans are probably better informed 
about English affairs than Englishmen about 
American afifairs — though my American friends 
are disposed to question this — but there is mani- 
festly much more room for fuller knowledge on 
either side. 

My sketch of President Wilson has been written 
with the purpose of introducing current American 



FOREWORD TO AMERICAN READERS 

problems, as well as a great American personality, 
to English readers. It may contain false judg- 
ments. It must almost inevitably contain technical 
inaccuracies. But I think it is at least a fair 
representation of what Englishmen who have tried 
to understand America think of America. If we 
misunderstand, this concrete example of the 
misunderstanding may stimulate some qualified 
American writer to correct our views. 

National Liberal Club, London 
April igiy 



PREFACE 

One of the more valuable of the indirect results 
of the war has been to reveal how little America 
is understood, and how necessary it is that she 
should be understood, in this country. At the 
present moment we are in danger of committing 
ourselves to a series of false judgments. The 
average Englishman's real interest in the United 
States and its present President dates from August 
19 1 4, and he is under an inevitable but unfortu- 
nate temptation to form sweeping estimates of 
a nation and a man on the basis of their attitude 
towards one particular issue, and that an issue 
of great complexity, over a space of little more 
than two years. 

Such estimates may by an accident be accurate, 
but if so it can only be by an accident. Without 
entering into thait, I have aimed here at presenting 
data^ bearing on the President of the United States 
and the problems he has to face, covering a wider 
field and a longer period. The relations between 
Great Britain and America will be among the most 
powerful factors in world politics after the war. 



8 PREFACE 

and if those relations are to be what they should 
be and might be, it is essential that the two peoples 
should know and understand one another. It is 
in the hope that it may make some small con- 
tribution to the further development of such an 
understanding that this book has been written. 
The American biographies of Mr. Wilson are 
not well known in this country, and, in any case, 
they take for granted a knowledge of American 
institutions and traditions which the English 
reader naturally does not possess. Now that 
President Wilson is about to enter on a second 
four years of office it is time an EngUsh life was 
written. 

As for myself, my chief title to attempt such 
a task is a lively consciousness of my own limita- 
tions. Having devoted what time I could in 
the past few years to an endeavour to diminish 
my own ignorance of America, I have written on 
the assumption that what I needed to know other 
people may need to know too. This biography 
purports to be neither a criticism nor an appre- 
ciation, nor what is sometimes a little grandilo- 
quently described as an interpretation. All I 
have attempted to do is to state the plain facts 
of President Wilson's career since he first entered 
public life, and to indicate in broad outline the 
nature of the political and social problems that 
are engaging him and all men of thought and 
action in America to-day. It has seemed to me 



PREFACE 9 

more useful to provide material for judgments 
than to obtrude a series of judgments of my own. 
I am greatly indebted to Mr. G. V. Seldes, late 
of Harvard, who has read my proofs and made a 
number of valuable suggestions. 

H. WILSON HARRIS. 
London, January 1917. 



NOTE 

The breach between America and Germany took 
place after the manuscript of this book had left 
my hands. It has not been necessary to alter 
anything already written, but a few pages have 
been added to Chapter IX (" The European 
War "), carrying it down to the actual severance 
of diplomatic relations. 

H. W. H. 
February 19 17. 



CONTENTS 



CIAPTKK PAGK 

I. EARLY YEARS . . . . . .13 

II. PRESIDENT OF PRINCETON . . . .25 

III. GOVERNOR OF NEW JERSEY . . . .43 

IV. THE 1912 ELECTION . . . . .65 
V. THE NEW president's PROSPECTS . . .78 

VI. THE ATTACK ON PRIVILEGE . . . .90 

Vll. THE MEXICAN PROBLEM . . . • II3 
VIII. FOREIGN POLICY AND THE MONROE DOCTRINE . 1 33 

IX. THE EUROPEAN WAR. . . . -153 

X. PREPAREDNESS AND PERMANENT PEACE . . 188 

XI. LABOUR AND SOCIAL REFORM . . • 213 

XII. RE-ELECTION ...... 227 

XIII. THE FUTURE . . . . . .244 

APPENDIX — AMERICA AND WORLD-POLITICS 257 

INDEX ...... . 273 



MAPS 

NEW JERSEY ..... opposite p. 43 

MEXICO . . . . . . „ 112 

UNITED STATES . . . . . „ 227 



PRESIDENT WILSON 



CHAPTER I 
EARLY YEARS 

We are confused by a war of interests, a clash of classes, a com- 
petition of powers, an effort at conquest and restraint, and the great 
forces which war and toil amongst us can be guided and reconciled 
only by some man who is truly a man of the people, not caught in the 
toils of any special interest, united by wide sympathy with many 
kinds of men, familiar with many aspects of life, and led, through 
many changes, to a personal experience which unites him with the 
common mass. — Lincoln Centenary Address, 1909.' 

WOODROW Wilson is an American of the second 
generation. His father's father, James Wilson, 
an Ulsterman from County Down, landed at Phila- 
delphia to seek his fortune in 1807. His mother's 
father, the Rev. Thomas Woodrow, a Scotch Pres- 
byterian minister who had held a charge at 
Carlisle for sixteen years and then migrated to 
Canada, crossed the American border in 1837 
and settled at Chillicothe, Ohio, as pastor of the 
first Presbyterian Church in that town. 

James Wilson, the immigrant, rapidly found his 
feet at Philadelphia, where he secured a post on 
Duane's Democratic journal, the Aurora, published 

' The passages at the head of each chapter are from Mr. Wilson's 
writings and speeches. 

13 



14 PRESIDENT WILSON 

where the greatest of American journalists, Ben- 
jamin Franklin, had turned out his unpretentious 
sheets nearly a century before. But Philadelphia 
was not to be the goal of young Wilson's pilgrim- 
age. The drang nacfi westen that followed the 
restoration of peace with England in 1814 laid 
hold of the young journalist -printer, and carried 
him inland over the Pennsylvanian border into 
Ohio. There he settled first at Steubenville, the 
capital of Jefferson County, and then at Pittsburg, 
establishing in the former town the Western 
Herald and in the latter (which lies on the eastern 
side of the Ohio -Pennsylvania border) the Penn- 
sylvania Advocate. It was at Steubenville that 
President Wilson's father and mother first met. 

The youngest of James Wilson's seven sons was 
Joseph Ruggles, who after a sound education at 
Jefferson College at Canonsburg, in Pennsylvania, 
supplemented by a year at the Western Theo- 
logical Seminary and another at Princeton, had 
been licensed as a preacher in the Presbyterian 
Church, and then appointed, not to a pulpit, but 
to a post in the Steubenville Male Academy. 
At the same time Dr. Thomas Woodrow's 
daughter Janet was a pupil at the companion 
academy for girls. A friendship, and then an 
intimacy, sprang up, and in 1849 Joseph Ruggles 
Wilson and Janet Woodrow were married. Joseph 
Wilson was ordained by the Presbytery of Ohio 
almost immediately after his wedding, but he 
continued his educational work at Steubenville, 
and then successively at Jefferson College and at 
Hampden Sydney College, Virginia, till 1855, 



EARLY YEARS 15 

when he accepted his first pastorate at Staunton, 
Virginia. In the following year, on December 
28, 1856, Thomas Woodrow Wilson was born. 
There were already two girls in the family, and 
a younger boy was born ten years later. 

There was a singular fitness in the chance that 
made Staunton Woodrow Wilson's birthplace ; for 
the Old Dominion, Virginia dives avum, had given 
America four out of her first five Presidents — 
Washington and Jefi"erson, Madison and Monroe. 
By his origin no less than by his office Dr. 
Wilson stands heir to great traditions. Those 
who will can convince themselves with no great 
difficulty that the influences of the warm and 
generous South have left their mark equally with 
his Scotch and Irish ancestry in salient traits of 
the President's character. 

Little of Woodrow Wilson's childhood was spent 
at Staunton, for in 1858 the family moved south 
to Augusta, in Georgia, a prosperous industrial 
town, where in a twelve years' pastorate the Rev. 
Joseph Wilson established a solid reputation as 
one of the foremost ministers of his denomination 
in the South. When Woodrow was four years old 
the Civil War broke out. The earliest recollec- 
tion clear in his memory is that of two men 
meeting in the street outside his father's house 
and one of them declaring, " Lincoln is elected, 
and there'll be war." The Wilsons were strong 
Southerners, but they came into little personal 
contact with the war. Till Sherman's men came 
marching through Georgia in 1864 the State 
had lain outside the theatres oi active warfare, 



1 6 PRESIDENT WILSON 

and Sherman himself left Augusta to his right 
as he swept north-west from Savannah to Atlanta. 
There were sundry alarms in the town, but none 
of them had substance, and all Woodrow Wilson 
saw of the war was an occasional body of Con- 
federates riding off to join the army, and Jefferson 
Davis himself passing through in 1865 in the 
hands of the Federals to his imprisonment in 
Fort Monroe. 

President Wilson was born too late in the nine- 
teenth century for any such romantic boyhood 
as fell to the lot of Washington on the frontier 
or Lincoln and Garfield in the backwoods. His 
education followed conventional lines, and in its 
earlier stages, at any rate, it brought to light 
no marked foreshadowings of the gifts that have 
raised the President to the position he holds to- 
day. Joseph Wilson was eminently wise in the 
training of his son. No attempt was made to 
force the boy's formal education. He was over 
nine before he had learned to read ; but long 
before that his mind was being developed and 
shaped by constant companionship and talk with 
his father, and he was already familiar with much 
of Scott and Dickens from the novels read aloud 
to the family in the Augusta manse. Father and 
son took long walks together, sometimes in the 
country, sometimes to inspect the factories and 
engineering shops and foundries in which the 
industrial life of Augusta centred. To this best of 
all forms of education, contact with a fertile, alert^ 
and sympathetic mind, was added such further 
training as was dealt out to a group of Augusta 



EARLY YEARS 17 

youngsters at a school kept by a Mr. J. T. Derry, 
who had laid aside his rifle after Appomattox and 
diverted his energies from the destruction of the 
North to the instruction of the South. After four 
years under the soldier -schoolmaster's ferule, 
vvoodrow Wilson (known at that time to his 
family and friends as Tom) rounded off his school 
life with another period of four years at an 
academy at Columbia, South Carolina, his father 
having obtained a professorship at the theological 
seminary in that town in 1870. 

The transition from school to university is a 
permanent landmark in the experience of every 
boy whose education is not cut short at the 
secondary stage ; and by the time Woodrow 
Wilson was taking leave of the Columbia academy 
and breaking ground at Davidson College, North 
Carolina, to which he now proceeded, he had 
reached an age at which public events were likely 
increasingly to arrest his interest and stimulate 
his thought. He had been too young at the 
time of the Civil War to be alive to its issues. 
He was a child of four when the first shot was 
fired at Fort Sumter, a little more than eight 
when the tragic news of Lincoln's murder plunged 
South and North alike into mourning. The vicis- 
situdes of Andrew Johnson's calamitous adminis- 
tration were little calculated to stir the interest 
of a boy of twelve ; but when, with Grant's suc- 
cession, the work of reconstruction and recon- 
ciliation was put in hand in earnest, it would have 
been strange if no dawning sense of citizenship 
and responsibility for a share in the work of 

2 



1 8 PRESIDENT WILSON 

rebuilding the nation had impressed itself on the 
mind of a youth just passing from school to the 
larger world of the university. 

Wilson, it must be remembered, was a pure 
Southerner, who never crossed the Potomac till 
he set out for his first term at Princeton in 1875, 
but he was born a few years too late to know from 
experience the embitterment that preceded the 
actual outbreak. Now secession had been tried 
and failed. The fundamental principle for which 
the Northerners had fought, the maintenance of 
the Union, was vindicated. The South, weary and 
stricken after its four years' fight against hope- 
less odds, was as ready as the North to live in the 
spirit of Lincoln's great exhortation and strive to 
" bind up the nation's wounds, ... to do all 
which may achieve and cherish a just and lasting 
peace." It was a time of re -formation and recon- 
struction. While Woodrow Wilson was building 
up his manhood the nation was rebuilding its 
shattered fabric. The South, in particular^ was 
schooling itself to a new conception of political 
principles. We can hardly be wrong in ascribing 
to these vital years the origin of that intense 
interest in the principles of government which 
Dr. Wilson has exhibited through the whole of 
his educational and political career. 

The terms university and college are practically 
interchangeable in America, and the institutions 
so described represent every level of educational 
efficiency. Davidson College, North Carolina, to 
which young Wilson passed on from the school at 
Columbia, was not of the highest grade, but it 



EARLY YEARS 19 

formed an adequate stepping-stone to Princeton, 
whither his father decided to send him after his 
course at Davidson had been interrupted at the 
end of his first year by an illness that necessitated 
a year of comparative rest. This year (1874-5) 
was spent at Wilmington, a North Carolina sea- 
port, where the Rev. Joseph Wilson now held a 
charge. The town had considerable historic 
interest, and migration thither enabled tlie future 
President, at the age of seventeen, to get his first 
glimpse of the sea, an experience still foreign to 
some millions of his fellow-countrymen. 

In September 1875 Woodrow Wilson matricu- 
lated at Princeton. The New Jersey foundation, 
of which it will be necessary to speak more 
fully in the following chapter, claims to rank 
third to Harvard and Yale among the greater 
universities of America. It has a history of 
170 years behind it, and has numbered James 
Madison among its graduates and Jonathan 
Edwards among its Presidents. In Wilson's year 
there was an entry of about 130, amongst whom 
he took a creditable place, but achieved no out- 
standing distinction. His " class " (i.e. the entry 
of his year) produced forty-two honours men in 
the graduating year 1879, Wilson standing forty- 
first on the list. For the benefit of those to whom 
such matters seem of moment, it is on record that 
in his senior year he measured 5 feet 1 1 inches 
and weighed 156 pounds. By the time he had 
graduated A.B. at Princeton, Wilson had con- 
cluded that the practice of law (in America the 
profession has not two branches, as in England) 



20 PRESIDENT WILSON 

was his right vocation, and he accordingly decided 
to supplement his Princeton course by further 
study in the law school of the University of 
Virginia. After little more than a year his health 
broke down, as it had done when he was at 
Davidson six years earlier. In consequence he 
spent the year 1881 at home, and in May 1882 
established himself as a practising lawyer at 
Atlanta, Georgia, in association with a partner 
named Renick. 

It is necessary thus to sketch the outlines of 
the President's education, but the bare facts 
themselves are of little interest or importance. 
Preferring deliberately to read discursively and 
make his explorations in fields of his own 
choosing, he sacrificed with small regret the 
prospects of purely academic distinction. 

Wilson's bent was definitely historical and 
political. At Princeton he read widely and 
wisely, studying particularly Chatham and Burke, 
Brougham and Macaulay. Bagehot was an inex- 
haustible mine of suggestion and inspiration. But 
the first serious stimulus to political thought and 
investigation came from a less classic source. In 
the Chancellor Green library at Princeton was a 
set of bound volumes of the Gentleman's Maga- 
zine, the later issues of which numbered among 
their leading features a running commentary on 
the proceedings of the British House of Commons 
by " The Member for the Chiltern Hundreds," 
one of the many pseudonyms of that veteran 
political journalist Sir Henry Lucy. St. Stephen's 
in the seventies was the arena of rhetorical battles 



EARLY YEARS 21 

well calculated to arrest and hold the interest 
of any observer capable of appreciating the 
niceties of constitutional theory or the triumphs 
of parliamentary oratory and the victories of 
debate. The great duel between Gladstone and 
Disraeli was at its height. Dizzy had just " dished 
the Whigs " over the Reform Bill of 1867 and 
gone out' of office on Irish Church Disestab- 
lishment. The Disestablishment Act had followed 
in 1869 and Forster's Education Act in 1870; 
Cardwell was carrying through his Army reforms ; 
the Ballot Act was being put on the Statute Book. 
In 1874, the year before Wilson entered at 
Princeton, Gladstone had gone out and Disraeli 
gone in, and though within the next two years one 
of the two protagonists had withdrawn into 
nominal retirement and the other into the tran- 
quillity of the House of Lords, they had left behind 
them in the elective Chamber traditions of con- 
troversy that speakers like Bright and Lowe, 
Stanley and John Russell had done hardly less 
than themselves to establish. Debates sustained 
by men of such calibre could lack nothing in 
inspiration to an eager student of politics in a 
country whose political history, apart from the 
great movements led by Washington and Lincoln, 
and the Webster-Clay-Calhoun controversies, was 
comparatively uneventful. Mr. Wilson himself 
has testified in later years to the influence Lucy's 
pictures of the Chamber at Westminster had on 
his broadening thought. 

The ideas thus absorbed found early expression. 
At Princeton Wilson wrote and debated. In the 



2 2 PRESIDENT WILSON 

latter field he was a little slow in coming to the 
front, though in his second, or sophomore, year 
he was awarded a second prize in Whig Hall, one 
of the two rival debating societies (the other was 
the Cliosophic) that flourished at Princeton. But 
by his fourth year he was recognized as the fore- 
most speaker in Whig Hall, and was, as a matter 
of course, chosen to represent it in the amiual 
Lynde Debate between the two college societies. 
The subjects on these occasions were not 
announced beforehand, the speakers being required 
to discourse extempore on a topic drawn from 
a hat. The topic in this particular year was 
Tariffs, and the chance of the draw condemned 
Wilson to champion Protection against Free 
Trade. That settled his part in the contest. 
Rejecting flatly any sophistic endeavour to make 
what he conceived to be the worse cause appear 
the better, he tore up the slip and retired from 
the debate. A substitute hastily enlisted by the 
Whigs proving unequal to the occasion, victory 
went to the Cliosophic. 

The interest of an episode trifling in itself 
lies in the evidence it affords of the depth 
of Wilson's political convictions at the time. 
Further proof of that comes from his casual 
writings at the same period, notable among 
them an essay on Chatham, for which he 
was awarded a prize in 1879, others on John 
Bright and Gladstone printed in the magazine 
of the University of Virginia in 1880, and an 
article on " Cabinet Government in the United 
States," over the signature Thomas W. Wilson, 



EARLY YEARS 23 

in the International Review of August 1879. The 
acceptance of such a contribution by a serious 
review of national reputation was a notable event 
for a writer still in his undergraduate stage. The 
essay consisted of a sober and critical discussion 
of the element of irresponsibility in American 
government, due to the severance of the executive 
and the legislative authorities and the growing 
power of the numerous secret committees of Con- 
gress. There is undiminished force to-day in the 
contention that an essential condition of efficient 
government is a closer association between the 
legislative and the executive, and particularly in the 
conclusion that " there must nepds bie;, as a binding 
link between them, some body which has no power 
to coerce the one and is interested in maintaining 
the independent effectiveness of the other. Such 
a link is the responsible Cabinet." 

This article appeared in August 1879. In the 
same year the writer took his A.B. degree at 
Princeton, and, as has been stated, entered the 
law school at the University of Virginia. With 
his interrupted course at the latter foundation 
the period of his formal education would 
normally have ended, had not the bad judgment 
of the people of Atlanta in their choice of 
lawyers led to an unpremeditated change in the 
young attorney's plans. The establishment of 
the firm of Renick and Wilson in the Georgian 
capital has already been mentioned. The partners 
" hung out their shingle," as the vernacular ex- 
pression has it, and waited for clients. After a 
year of waiting the younger partner had had 



24 PRESIDENT WILSON 

enough. If there was no opening for him to 
practice law he could at least teach it, and to 
qualify himself the better he entered, in the 
autumn of 1883, on a two years' post-gfaduate 
course at Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore. 
In 1886 he gained the degree of Ph.D. for a 
notable thesis on Congressional Government, to 
which it will be necessary to refer again. A 
year earlier he had accepted his first teaching 
post, a lectureship in history and political economy 
at Bryn Mawr, a women's college on the outskirts 
of Philadelphia. He remained at Bryn Mawr 
three years, lecturing at the same time at Johns 
Hopkins, and in 1888 was elected to the chair 
of history and political economy at Wesleyan 
University, Middletown, Connecticut. Wesleyan 
was less sectarian than its name would suggest. 
There was an able faculty and a large nucleus 
of students (of both sexes) who had come to 
the university for serious work. But it hardly 
gave the Professor of History the platform his 
growing reputation qualified him to occupy, and 
after two years, in 1890, he was offered, and 
accepted, the chair of jurisprudence and politics 
at his old university, Princeton. There the next 
twenty years of his life were to be spent. 



CHAPTER II 
PRESIDENT OF PRINCETON 

The college should seek to make the men whom it receives 
something more than excellent servants of a trade or skilled practi- 
tioners of a profession. It should give them elasticity of faculty and 
breadth of vision, so that they shall have a surplus of mind to expend, 
not upon their profession only, for its liberalization and enlargement, 
but also upon the broader interests which lie about them, in the 
spheres in which they are to be not breadwinners merely, but citizens 
as well, and in their own hearts, where they are to grow to the stature 
of real nobility. It is this free capital of mind the world most stands 
in need of — this free capital that awaits investm.ent in undertakings, 
spiritual as well as material, which advance the race and help all men 
to a better life. 

Inaugural Addi'ess as President of Princeton^ Ocloba 1902. 

Dr. Wilson's life at Princeton divides into two 
periods. From 1890 to 1902 he was a member 
of the faculty, taking his place with his colleagues 
as a part of the university machine. From 1902 
to 191 o he was President, entrusted with the 
power, of which he did not hesitate to make full 
use, of changing the structure and adapting the 
operations of the machine into accordance with 
his own ideals. The college — or university, as it 
became in 1896 — was heir to honourable tradi- 
tions. A Presbyterian foundation, it dates back 
to 1746, being thus the fourth in age among 
American universities, Harvard, William and Mary 
(Virginia), and Yale alone antedating it. The 

25 



2 6 PRESIDENT WILSON 

tide of revolutionary war had flowed round it, 
leaving the marks of conflict on the college build- 
ings. In 1783 the Continental Congress held 
temporary session there, and it was from Princeton 
that Washington issued his farewell address to 
the Army. In recent years Princeton has been 
the most popular of the Northern colleges among' 
students from the South, a fact that no doubt had 
something to do with Woodrow Wilson's entry 
as a freshman in 1875, and made his return as a 
professor in 1890 the more congenial. 

To-day — and what is true of to-day is true of 
the nineties of last century — Princeton ranks with 
Harvard and Yale, Cornell and Columbia and 
Johns Hopkins, among the group of foundations 
recognized as representing the highest type of 
American universities — and the type incidentally 
which approximates most closely to that familiar 
in England. The grounds and buildings are 
extensive. The campus covers over five hundred 
acres, with a boating -lake four miles long, formed 
by the widening of the Millstone River at Mr. 
Andrew Carnegie's expense. The buildings in- 
clude a number of halls, residential and tutorial, 
of which Nassau is the oldest and most famous, 
while Seventy-Nine has a particular interest in 
connection with Mr. Wilson, since it was built at 
the expense of alumni of his own class of 1879. 
Whig and Clio Halls, to which some reference has 
already been made,' are the homes of the two 
chief literary societies at Princeton. Within the 
last few years an extensive graduate school has 

' P. 22. 



PRESIDENT OF PRINCETON 27 

been added under circumstances which, it will 
be seen, closely affected Mr. Wilson's position as 
President of the University. The number of 
students, which twenty years ago stood at some- 
thing under a thousand, is now over sixteen 
hundred. 

When the new professor took up his work in 
September 1890 he had been married just five 
years. His wife, formerly Miss Ellen Louise 
Axson, was an old Augusta acquaintance, the 
daughter of a Savannah minister. Their marriage 
had taken place in June 1885, a few months 
before Mr. Wilson began his work at Bryn Mawr. 
Since this is a political r^-ther than a personal 
biography, it is sufficient to add here that there 
were three daughters of the marriage ; that after 
a married life of twenty-nine years Mrs. Wilson 
died at the White House in August 19 14, in the 
second year of her husband's Presidency ; and 
that in December 191 5 Mr, Wilson was married 
to Mrs. Norman Gait, formerly Miss Ediih Boiling, 
of Wythesville, Virginia. 

The twelve years of Dr. Wilson's professorship 
at Princeton were uneventful. As a lecturer his 
popularity was great, the earnestness of the true 
teacher being seasoned by a quiet and cultured 
humour that made attendance at his courses a 
matter as much of pleasure as of profit. He knew 
his men personally, and his house in Library Place 
was always open to the students, who took full 
advantage of the standing invitation extended to 
them. While his position at Princeton was being 
steadily strengthened both by the force of his 



28 PRESIDENT WILSON 

personality and by his success as a lecturer, his 
name was becoming increasingly advertised 
through the country by the books he found time 
to publish before the more exacting duties of 
President of the University curtailed his literary 
activity. The first and best known of these, 
Congressional Government: A Study in American 
Politics, was indeed established as a standard 
authority on American government before Mr. 
Wilson's return to Princeton. He had put it in 
as thesis for his Ph.D. at Johns Hopkins in 
1885, and on its publication in the same year it 
had achieved a success comparable, among univer- 
sity theses, only with Mr. Bryce's Holy Roman 
Empire, first written as an Oxford prize exer- 
cise. Congressional Government has already 
run through close on thirty impressions. In 
1889, Mr. Wilson's second year at Wesleyan 
University, The State: Elements of Historical 
and Practical Politics, a study of different forms 
of government, had appeared. A pioneer text- 
book in the field of political science, The State 
gained for its author recognition at the hands of 
a competent P^nglish critic ' as the foremost, 
if not the first, of those who rendered possible the 
intelligent study of a department of sociology upon 
which the happiness and good government of the 
human race essentially depend." 

With the exception of these two notable works 
and The New Freedom, a collection of cam- 
paign speeches published in 1913, after his elec- 
tion as President, all Mr. Wilson's books were 

' Oscar Browning, Preface to 1899 eiiition of The State, 



PRESIDENT OF PRINCETON 29 

issued during the periods of his professorship and 
presidency at Princeton. In 1893 Division and 
Reunion, 1829-188 9, a study of the ultimate 
springs and effects of the Civil War, appeared, 
and the same year saw the pubUcation of a 
collection of essays grouped under the title An 
Old Master. In 1896 George Washington, a 
singularly human and attractive appreciation of 
the liberator of the American colonies, was pub- 
lished, and coincidently with it another essay 
volume bearing the name Mere Literature. In 
the year of Dr. Wilson's election to the presidency 
of the university his lengthiest work, a History 
of the American People, in five volumes, made 
its appearance, to be followed six years later by 
the last of his treatises on the theory of govern- 
ment, Constitutional Government in the United 
States. It is hardly matter for surprise that 
the responsibilities attaching to the Governorship 
of New Jersey and the Presidency of the United 
States should in the past six years have left scant 
leisure for literary production. 

In June 1902 the President of Princeton, Dr. 
Francis Landey Patton, resigned, and three months 
later, at the beginning of the new academical 
year, Dr. Woodrow Wilson succeeded to his office, 
the appointment falling by universal consent to 
the member of the faculty whose writings and 
occasional addresses, principally on educational 
subjects, outside Princeton had won him distinc- 
tion such as none of his colleagues could claim. 
The presidency had never before been held by 
a lavman. 



30 PRESIDENT" WILSON 

The opening of Mr. Wilson's public career may 
more properly be fixed in 1902, when he became 
President of Princeton, than in 19 10, when he was 
elected Governor of New Jersey. The importance 
of a university president in America is not to be 
appreciated from any analogy drawn between Yale 
or Harvard or Princeton and Oxford or Cam- 
bridge, still less between the American founda- 
tions and an individual Oxford or Cambridge 
college. Parallels have been drawn between the 
President of Princeton and the Master of Trinity 
or the Dean of Christ Church. The comparison 
is misleading. The university in America holds 
a larger place in the life of the nation than in 
either England or Scotland, and the prestige 
attaching to its Presidency is correspondingly 
enhanced. Lord Bryce in his American Com- 
monwealth ' dwells on the " almost monarchical 
position " of the President within the university. 
" His powers," he adds, " in the management of 
the institution and the selection of professors are 
much greater than those of the head of an English 
or Scottish university. But he is often also a 
leading figure in the State, perhaps even in the 
nation. No persons in the country, hardly even 
the greatest railway magnates, are better known, 
and certainly none are more respected, than the 
Presidents of the leading universities." It may 
be observed in addition that geographically 
Princeton, particularly in view of its strong 
Southern connection, tended to provide a more 
effective platform than Harvard in Massachusetts, 

' Vol. ii. chap. cix. 



PRESIDENT OF PRINCETON 31 

or Yale in Connecticut, or Cornell in New York 
State . 

But it was less in the public position it gave 
him than in the opportunity it afforded for the 
display in action of his fearless and constructive 
radicalism that his acceptance of the Presidency 
of Princeton marked a new starting-point in Mr. 
Wilson's career. Not that there is any breach or 
revolution in the development of his purposes 
and principles. His life has been a singularly 
consistent unity. We can look back from the 
*' direct primary " campaign in New Jersey in 
191 I to the International Review article of 1879, 
with its assertion of " America's greatest claim 
to political honour — the right of every man to a 
voice in the government under which he lives " ; 
or from the Tariff legislation in 19 13 to the 
declaration made in 1882 by the junior partner 
in the firm of Renick and Wilson to a tariff com- 
mission visiting Atlanta, that " the only thing 
that free traders contend for is, that there shall 
be only so much duty laid as will be necessary 
to defray the expenses of the Government, reduce 
the public debt, and leave a small surplus for 
accumulation." But it was election to the Presi- 
dency of Princeton that first put administrative 
power into his hands and enabled him to give 
concrete application to those principles and doc- 
trines he was later to vindicate before the world 
on a larger stage. 

The keynotes of Mr. Wilson's public career 
may be stated, at a certain sacrifice of complete- 
ness in the interests of brevity, ks a profound faith 



32 PRESIDENT WILSON 

in democracy and an indomitable enthusiasm for 
reform.) At Princeton the established order was 
aristocratic and conservative. Conservatism is a 
common attribute of universities, and in America 
it is accentuated (though there are other counter- 
balancing forces) by the close association main- 
tained between a college and its alumni, or former 
graduates, who naturally tend to turn a suspicious 
eye on threatened innovations. Dr. Wilson was 
under no illusions as to the task that faced him. 
His twelve years as professor had given him 
ample time to develop his convictions as to what 
Princeton might and should be, and to realize 
the gulf that separated the actual from the ideal. 
He had high visions of the functions of a univer- 
sity in the national life. " We are not at liberty," 
he maintained, " to use Princeton for our private 
purposes or to adapt her in any way to our own 
use and pleasure. It is our bounden duty to make 
her more and more responsive to the intellectual 
and moral needs of a great nation." In 1902 
Princeton was not so responsive. It was a univer- 
sity for rich men's sons ; privilege and luxury — 
in their best form, indeed, but still privilege and 
luxury — were entrenched ; and the standard of 
scholastic attainment was unjustifiably low. There 
was abimdant scope for a President who con- 
fessed that "if to seek to go to the root is to be 
a radical, a radical I am." It was after he had 
held the presidency for some years that he told 
the Pittsburg alumni that " the colleges of this 
country must be reconstructed from top to bottom, 
and America is going to demand it " ; but the 



PRESIDENT OF PRINCETON 33 

conviction was already 'deeply; implanted in his mind 
long before he was chosen to rule over Princeton. 

The new President's first assault was on the 
mechanism of the instructional system. As a 
beginning the level of scholarship had to be 
raised. Almost immediately on taking office, 
therefore, Dr. Wilson appointed a committee to 
consider the enforcement of what had become 
merely nominal standards of attainment. A 
scheme was formulated under which men had 
to pass their examinations or go. Some of them 
went. The others learned to work. There was 
a short-lived outcry, particularly among the aristo- 
crats. Then the storm died down and Princeton 
settled quietly into its new stride. 

That, however, was no more than a preliminary 
move. The next reform, more fundamental but 
less calculated to provoke hostility, was a recasting 
of the academic curriculum. By the beginning of 
the twentieth century the revolt against the old 
cast-iron regime of dead languages and mathe- 
matics had opened the door to a freedom of choice 
that was in grave danger of being carried to 
excess. Three boys out of ten may be competent 
on entering college at nineteen to map out their 
own course of study for the next four years ; but 
that estimate is probably too high, and, in any 
case, the remaining seven will not be competent. 
The right compromise is clearly that the univer- 
sity should impose a certain groundwork of 
general education, and encourage its men from 
that starting-point to launch out on the particular 
study of their choice. 

3 



34 PRESIDENT WILSON 

Dr. Wilson was one of the first of American 
educationists to emphasize that salutary doc- 
trine. In his inaugural address at Princeton in 
1902 he had laid it down that out of the host of 
studies " we must make choice, and suffer the 
pupil himself to make choice. But the choice 
we make must be the chief choice, the choice that 
the pupil makes the subordinate choice. We 
must supply the synthesis and must see to it that, 
whatever group of studies the student selects, it 
shall at least represent the round whole, contain 
all the elements of modern knowledge, and be 
itself a complete circle of general subjects." 
Practically applied, as Dr. Wilson forthwith 
applied it, that doctrine meant that for their 
freshman and sophomore years men followed a 
prescribed course of study, while as juniors and 
seniors they were allowed wide, though not un- 
fettered, liberty of choice. The " department 
system," or system of " group electives " (so 
called because the student's choice must fall within 
a group of studies so formulated as to give unity 
and sequence to his whole college course), is now 
generally accepted throughout American universi- 
ties, its wide adoption being due, not wholly 
indeed, but in considerable measure, to Dr. 
Wilson's pioneer work at Princeton. 

The ground thus cleared, the road lay open for 
the greatest of Dr. Wilson's educational reforms. 
At the time when he was set in authority at 
Princeton the provision made by the typical 
American university for the actual imparting of 
instruction was gravely inadequate. The old 



PRESIDENT OF PRINCETON 35 

*' recitation," or catechetical, method was being 
abandoned in favour of set lectures ; and outside 
the two or three hours a day spent in the lecture- 
room the student was left to his own almost 
undirected reading. There was a total lack of 
tutorial guidance, and, what was hardly less 
serious, the contact of adolescent with maturer 
minds was practically confined to the few hours 
a week given to attending lectures, and the value 
of these varied directly with the lecturer's capacity 
and the student's attention. 

Dr. Wilson met the situation with a bold and 
constructive reform. He realized the inadequacy 
of mere classroom teaching and the necessity of 
somehow providing for the personal touch, the 
play of mind on mind, that is the condition of true 
education as opposed to mere instruction. That 
provision was found in the preceptorial system — 
the creation of small groups of students associated 
with a tutor or professor, whose teaching was 
conducted through the medium of informal con- 
ferences, closely resembling the German seminar. 
The idea of such a system shaped itself early in 
the President's mind. In addressing a meeting 
of Princeton alumni at New York three months 
after his inauguration in 1902 he had sketched 
the outline of his scheme, pointing to the need 
for qualified instructors to act as companions and 
coaches and guides of the undergraduates' read- 
ing. " If we could get a body of such tutors 
at Princeton," he predicted. " we could transform 
the place from a place where there are youngsters 
doing tasks to a place where there are men doing 



36 PRESIDENT WILSON 

thinking, men who arc conversing about the things 
of thought, men who are eager and interested in 
the things of thought." 

To a large extent that transformation has been 
effected. To secure the full benefit that might 
be derived from it, all the students should, ^as 
President Wilson realized, be domiciled, with the 
tutors, in the hostels or dormitories (residential 
halls), instead of living independently in lodgings 
in the neighbourhood. That further change he 
was able to effect in part. For freshmen and 
sophomores the hostel system became general. 
In the case of third and fourth year men the 
attempt to introduce it broke down under circum- 
stances presently to be described. But the essence 
of the preceptorial system was the subordination 
of the formal lecture to the conversational con- 
ference or discussion. As regards that part of 
his scheme Dr. Wilson's success was unqualified. 
Educationally it raised the existing standards to 
a new level, while its contribution to the social 
life of the university in establishing new contacts 
and breaking down old barriers had a different, 
but hardly inferior, value. 

The successes that marked the first half of Dr. 
Wilson's presidency at Princeton are not more 
to his credit than the failures that marked the 
second. He knew well at the outset that to 
reform Princeton education would be less for- 
midable an undertaking than to democratize 
Princeton society. But he had no thought of 
shrinking from either task. At the end of his 
fifth year as President he laid before the trustees 



PRESIDENT OF PRINCETON 37 

of the university a scheme intimately affecting the 
future of the students' clubs. The Princeton clubs 
were a characteristic feature of the life of the 
university. The fraternities, college societies 
usually denominated by two or three Greek letters 
(such, for example, as the Ske), familiar through- 
out American universities, were forbidden at 
Princeton, and their absence had stimulated the 
tendency of the wealthier students, of whom there 
were many, to associate in luxurious residential 
club-houses. There were twelve of these in the 
close vicinity of the campus, accommodating in 
all between three and four hundred men. 

While there was nothing to criticize in the 
conduct of the clubs, their existence was a stand- 
ing repudiation of every ideal Dr. Wilson aimed 
at establishing at Princeton. They perpetuated 
a spirit of exclusiveness and privilege, and 
along two distinct lines worked consistently for 
separation and division in the university. On the 
one hand, they drove a wedge between the rich 
man and the poor man, for the clu,bs were a 
luxury of the well-to-do ; on the other, they 
erected a permanent barrier between under- 
graduates of the first two and the last two years, 
since neither freshmen nor sophomores were 
eligible for membership. At the same time they 
wer6 so firmly established in the life of the society 
that on many men the hope of election to a par- 
ticular club exerted a much more effective 
influence than the hope of academic distinction. 

Nothing could be more alien to Dr. Wilson's 
idea of what a university should be, and no one 



38 PRESIDENT WILSON 

familiar with his character could suppose that he 
would be content to leave institutions so detrimental 
to the true interests of Princeton untouched. He 
made no direct attack on the system. He rarely 
chose destructive methods where constructive 
would serve his ends. In 1907 he laid before 
the trustees of the university proposals for the re- 
organization of Princeton on lines approximating 
to the college system at Oxford or Cambridge, 
with the difference, however, that the whole of 
the teaching would remain in the hands of the 
university itself. The proposed residential halls 
were therefore to be of the nature of hostels, men 
being so distributed that rich and poor, elder and 
younger, would be thrown together in a new and 
wholesome intimacy. There would be an end 
of the old aristocracy of wealth or seniority, a 
breaking -down of the barriers raised by an 
unhealthy, if time-honoured, tradition. 

The merits of the new proposals were beyond 
challenge ; they were, indeed, the logical out- 
come of the preceptorial system, and without them 
that admirable reform could not come to full 
fruition. In June 1907 twenty-four of the twenty- 
seven trustees (two being absent and one dis- 
sentient) gave them their cordial approval. A 
few weeks later the scheme, thus endorsed, was 
made public in the university, to be greeted with 
opposition immediate and intense. The clubs, 
whose existence was directly threatened (though 
the hostel scheme was prompted in the first 
instance by recognition of its own inherent ad- 
vantages), set the note of the outcry. Alumni of 



PRESIDENT OF PRINCETON 39 

every generation — once wealthy club members, 
now substantial financial supporters of the univer- 
sity — rallied to the support of menaced privilege. 
Warnings of the withdrawal of subscriptions 
rained in on the Board. The trustees quailed, 
then yielded, before the storm. In October they 
called on the President to withdraw his proposals. 
Dr. Wilson bowed, to force majeure. He had 
run his first tilt against the power of the dollar — 
and the dollar had won. 

A second venture in the same quixotic crusade 
lay not far ahead. During Dr. Wilson's term 
of office the proposal to establish a graduate 
school at Princeton, where facilities for post- 
graduate work were almost, non-existent, had 
taken definite shape. Dr. Andrew West, desig- 
nated Dean of the Graduate School before the 
school was in actual being', had drawn up a 
report embodying his personal views as to its 
character and constitution. These had been cir- 
culated, but the matter rested in abeyance for 
lack of funds, till at the end of 1906 a legacy 
of $250,000 (under the will of a Mrs. Swann), 
coupled with the quite acceptable condition that 
the new college should be built on the campus 
as an integral part of the university, enabled the 
drafting of the plans to be put in hand in earnest. 
Much time was spent in deliberation and dis- 
cussion, and in 1909, before building had actually 
been begun, the university received from a Mr. 
W. C. Proctor, of Cincinnati, an offer of 
$500,000, contingent on the raising of a like 
sum by subscription. That was not the only 



40 PRESIDENT WILSON 

condition attached, nor the most stringent. Prac- 
tically the whole of the second half -million dollars 
was, in fact, quickly obtained. Unfortunately, 
the donor stipulated further that the college should 
be modelled in detail on the plans formulated by 
Dean West, and that it should be located, not 
on the chosen site, but in a part of the town 
remote from the existing university buildings. 

An issue involving something far more funda- 
mental than individual taste and preference was 
directly raised. Dr. Wilson realized immediately 
how vital a principle was at stake. Was the 
management of Princeton to rest with those — 
the President, the faculty, and the trustees — to 
whom its destinies were committed as perpetual 
executors of the founders and benefactors of the 
university ? Or was the right of interference and 
veto to be purchasable by any donor whose 
ofifer ran into the necessary number of thousands ?. 
The choice was between mind and money as the 
governing factor. That in itself would have been 
decisive, even if Dean West's plans and Mr. 
Proctor's proposed site had been acceptable to 
President and trustees. 

And, as it happened, they were not. What the 
Dean had planned, and the donor approved, was 
an ornate and luxurious school, severed both in 
situation and in mental atmosphere from the rest 
of Princeton, where an intellectual aristocracy 
would form an aloof and exclusive society, intent 
before all things on its own prosperity. The 
graduate school of Dr. Wilson's ideal was to be 
an integral part of Princeton. The men who 



PRESIDENT OF PRINCETON 41 

remained, or who came from other colleges, to 
follow the higher studies for which provision 
would be made, were to have as essential a place 
in Princeton society as freshman and sophomore, 
junior and senior. Their work would be an in- 
centive to the undergraduates in embodying an 
ideal of academic attainment above the level of 
the ordinary A.B. or B.Litt. degtee, and their 
society would effectually stimulate the develop- 
ment of that intellectual companionship which the 
preceptorial system was designed, and successfully 
designed, to generate. 

The President stood unwavering by a principle 
it would be fatal to betray. It was money or 
mind. " When the country is looking to us as 
men who prefer ideas even to money, are we 
going," he asked, " to withdraw and say, ' After 
all, we find we were mistaken : we prefer money 
to ideas ' ? " The trustees were in perplexity, for 
there was much division of opinion among the 
alumni. Their decision rested in doubt, but a 
committee of their number appointed to consider 
the situation advised against accepting the gift if 
with it they must accept the conditions originally 
attached. The offer was thereupon withdrawn. 
Princeton had rejected a benefaction of half a 
million, with the certainty of another half -million 
to supplement it. The decision was taken to pro- 
ceed with the graduate school on the modest 
scale first contemplated under the old quarter - 
million Swann bequest. The second tilt with the 
dollar was to all appearance over, leaving the 
President this time victor of the field. A g*reat 



:42 PRESIDENT WILSON 

principle had been vindicated, and Princeton was 
immeasurably the richer for its sacrifice. 

Never had a great contest a more ironical 
climax. Before the mingled clamour of approval 
and criticism had died a\vay an aged Princeton 
alumnus, Isaac Wyman, died, leaving in his will 
over three million dloHats, bequeathed to the 
Graduate College at Princeton, Dean West and 
another being nominated as trustees of the bequest. 
The Dean and his plans had triumphed. The 
endowment from the grave was conclusive. Simul- 
taneously the Proctor offer was renewed — with 
its conditions. The trustees, always hesitant, 
withdrew all opposition. In June 1910 the gift 
was accepted. Dr. Wilson recognized defeat. 
The academic year ended a week later, and three 
months' vacation gave him time to consider his 
future action. External influences contributed to 
precipitate a decision. On September 15th the 
Democratic State Convention nominated Dr. 
Woodrow Wilson as Governor of New Jersey. 
The same month he resigned the Presidency of 
Princeton. He laid down his office under the 
shadow of defeat, but he left behind him a record 
of salutary and permanent reform such as no one 
of his predecessors had ever established. 



CHAPTER III 
GOVERNOR OF NEW JERSEY 

You have given the people of this country so many persons to 
select for office that they have not time to select them, and have to 
leave it to professionals — that is to say, the professional politicians, 
which, reduced to its simplest term, is the boss of the district. When 
you vote the Republican or Democratic ticket, you either vote for the 
names selected by one machine or the names selected by the other 
machine. . . . The remedy is contained in one word, simplification. 
Simplify your processes, and you will begin to control; complicate 
them, and you will get farther and farther away from their control. 
Simplification ! Simplification ! Simplification ! is the task that awaits 
us : to reduce the number of persons voted for to the absolute 
workable minimum — knowing whom you have selected, knowing 
whom you have trusted, and having so few persons to watch that you 
can watch them. That is the way we are going to get popular control 
back in this country, and that is the only way we are going to get 
popular control back. 

Address to ike Civic League of St. Lotus, March 1909. 

The position of State Governor in the United 
States has no true analogy in English political 
life. The forty-eight States differ from a County 
in England, a Department in France, and a 
Government in Russia, in that their powers are 
original, not devolved. The thirteen colonies that 
banded together in 1775 to fight the War of 
Independence became in 1783, when the victory 
had been won, thirteen sovereign States, and when 
in 1787 the Constitution of the United States 

43 



44 PRESIDENT WILSON 

was formulated, it conferred on the Federal 
Government only such powers as the individual 
States had chosen voluntarily to surrendci". These 
original thirteen States determined by their pre- 
cedent the position of the thirty-five subsequently 
admitted into the Union, the governing factor in 
their relation to the Federal Government being the 
principle that any powers not expressly conferred 
on the latter by the Constitution remain in the 
hands of the State. 

The States themselves differ in the details of 
their institutions, but under the Constitution all 
must maintain a Republican form of government, 
which is invariably represented by a Governor 
and two Houses of Legislature, a Senate and an 
Assembly. In its main features, therefore, the 
State Government is a replica in little of the 
Federal, the Governor corresponding to the Presi- 
dent, and the two branches of the legislature to 
the Senate and House of Representatives at 
Washington. The Governor, unlike the bearer 
of that title in a British colony, is not appointed 
by the central Government, but elected by the 
voters of the State, Washington having no concern 
with or control over him unless he should come 
into collision with the Constitution or a Federal 
law. 

While each State has its own Constitution, 
the position of the Governor is substantially the 
same in all. He holds office in some cases for 
two years, in some for three or four. His salary 
varies from as low as 2,500 dollars (Vermont) to 
as high as 12,000 (Illinois). In New Jersey the 



GOVERNOR OF NEW JERSEY 45 

term is three years and the salary 10,000 dollars. 
The Governor is the chief executive of the State, 
as the President is of the Union, and he enjoys 
the same power of veto over legislation. He 
has extensive powers of appointment, which he 
regularly exercises in favour of his political sup- 
porters, and limited powers of removal. Since 
he sits in neither of the two Houses of Legislature, 
and addresses them only in messages delivered 
annually or on special occasions, his direct in- 
fluence over legislation is usually comparatively 
small. His real power depends on his personality. 
A forceful Governor, like a forceful President, can 
find means of initiating extensive programmes, 
as men like Mr. Roosevelt and Mr. Wilson have 
demonstrated in both capacities. 

It was as candidate for an ofifice involving such 
responsibilities that Mr. Wilson was nominated 
at the New Jersey State Convention in September 
19 10, the actual election falling in the following 
November. The choice of the President of 
Princeton as candidate for the highest executive 
office in the State, and Mr. Wilson's acceptance of 
the invitation thus extended, were unexpected, but 
not intrinsically remarkable, events. It has 
already been seen that the idea of a public career, 
if circumstances should so shape themselves, had 
taken an early hold on the future President's mind, 
and during his later years at Princeton he had 
been in much request as a speaker outside the 
borders both of the university and of the State. 
He addressed Chambers of Commerce on the 
control of public companies, Bar Associations on 



46 {PRESIDENT WILSON 

the constitutions and functions of government, 
Bankers' Associations on financial topics, Civic 
Leagues on electoral and administrative reform, 
and educational gatherings of every variety on 
subjects with which his position at Princeton par- 
ticularly qualified him to deal. He was known as 
a radical and a democrat, and — what is not neces- 
sarily implied by the latter term — a. Democrat in 
the political sense. 

But if Mr. Wilson's entry into active political 
life was not in itself remarkable, there were certain 
features connected with his adoption that did make 
both the nomination and the acceptance surprising. 
Nothing could be more antagonistic to Mr. 
Wilson's political ideals than the principles, if 
principles they could be called, that governed the 
tactics of the Democratic (and equally of the 
Republican) Party in New Jersey ; and nothing 
was calculated to be more fatal to the aims of the 
professional politicians than the election of the 
candidate of their choice. But the Democrats 
wanted office at any cost. They had not a man 
who could carry the Governorship on his own or 
the party's merits. Woodrow Wilson could carry 
it, and the Democratic caucus had little doubt that 
once they had him elected they could bend him 
to their purposes, as they bent every holder of 
public office from Governor to sanitary trustee. 
That accounts for the party's side of the transac- 
tion. Mr. Wilson's acceptance is easier to explain. 
He had lived for twenty years in New Jersey. He 
had no illusions on the condition of the public 
administration, dominated as it had been for a 



GOVERNOR OF NEW JERSEY 47 

generation by one or other of two corrupt and 
unprincipled party gangs, working always in 
ostensible rivalry, though often in secret collu- 
sion. Never did an American State stand in 
greater need of a " clean up," and if Wilson were 
invested with the powers that would enable him 
to carry out that salutary process, he was not the 
man to shrink from applying' them. He warned 
his supporters that they were running a man who 
went into politics with his hands free and un- 
pledged to party bosses. They accepted his con- 
ditions, conscious of the value of a candidate of 
Dr. Wilson's personality and character to a party 
of damaged reputation, and privately satisfied that 
his assertion of political independence was worth" 
exactly as much as the protestations of a dozen 
self-styled independents in the past. 

The political atmosphere into which the univer- 
sity president plunged when he motored from 
Princeton to Trenton to make his speech of 
acceptance in September 1910 could hardly be 
paralleled in English public life. Democracy in 
America is theoretically unfettered. Every man 
votes as he will, and the successful candidate 
represents the free and spontaneous choice of a 
majority (or at least a " plurality ") of the 
electors. In actual practice the whole system 
of government, municipal. State, and Federal, 
tends to fall into the hands of a narrow party 
caucus, always astute, often unscrupulous, some- 
times corrupt, basing its power on an evil tradition 
which justifies the doctrine of " the spoils to th'e 
victor," and enables the party leader to bind his 



48 PRESIDENT WILSON 

followers to him by the actual enjoyment or the 
confident hope of the countless official appoint- 
ments to which he holds the patronage. When a 
change of Administration in the Union, the State, 
or the city means the removal of an army of 
officials, who in this country would be permanent 
national or municipal servants, and the substitu- 
tion of another army appointed by the victors at 
the polls, it is quixotic to hope that political life 
can be clean. As it is, the domination of the 
" machine," with its rings and bosses, operates 
to enthrone material interests in politics and reduce 
the conscientious and independent elector to impo- 
tence. Nominations of candidates are made, not 
by the rank and file of the party direct, but by 
delegates appointed usually at a carefully packed 
meeting, at which the party managers rarely have 
any difficulty in securing the adoption of a list 
prepared in caucus beforehand and put to the 
meeting as a whole. At the actual election the 
free and independent voter, presented with a 
formidable list of rival candidates for Federal, 
State, and local office (a New York ballot sheet 
in the 1 9 1 6 election measured eight feet in 
length), backs his party ticket solid, with dis- 
ciplined and undiscriminating loyalty to the 
machine . 

Legislators thus elected are under a perpetual 
obligation to consolidate their own and their 
party's position by devoting themselves con- 
sistently to the conciliation of individuals and 
corporations (public companies) whose goodwill 
is a party asset. The prevalence of actual cor- 



GOVERNOR OF NEW JERSEY 49 

ruption in American public life is probably less 
than Americans themselves sometimes suggest, 
but the relations between individual members of 
a State Senate or Assembly and a railroad appre- 
hensive of regulative legislation, a light or power 
company playing for the grant of a monopoly, or 
a contractor angling for the supply of goods to a 
public institution, are notoriously equivocal. The 
art of reciprocal back-scratching is nowhere more 
scientifically developed than in American State 
politics. 

In modification of these strictures it should be 

added that the standard of political purity is much 

higher in some States than in others, and that, 

taking the Union as a whole, the level has been 

substantially raised in the last twenty years. Many 

States, by making a "direct primary" (i.e. the 

choice of party candidates by a direct vote of the 

rank and file of the party, instead of by a packed 

delegation) statutory, have done a good deal to 

weaken the boss and the party machine. New 

Jersey had adopted the direct primary for certain 

ofiices before the date of Dr. Wilson's candidature, 

but in most respects State politics were still at the 

mercy of the rival bosses and their subservient 

and interested followers. The Republicans had 

held the Governorship for fourteen years, and the 

Democratic boss, ex -Senator James Smith (who 

was on such terms with the head of the rival 

machine as to secure a substantial share of the 

pickings), was perfectly conscious, not merely that 

the position could only be won for his party by 

a candidate of Dr. Wilson's calibre, but that eVen 

4 



50 PRESIDENT WILSON 

so the success of the candidature would largely 
depend on the extent to which the party nominee 
remained dissociated from the traditions of the 
party machine and relied for his appeal on the 
force of his own personality. 

Dr. Wilson's speech of acceptance, after his 
nomination as candidate had been carried on the 
first ballot (i.e. by a clear majority over the com- 
bined votes of rival candidates) in the Democratic 
State Convention, defined his attitude on the 
political issues then immediately pending. He 
touched on six questions in particular, three re- 
garded as of primary and three as of secondary 
importance : reorganization and economy in 
administration ; the equalization of taxation; the 
control of corporations ; employers' liability ; 
corrupt practices at elections ; and conservation of 
natural resources for the good of the common- 
wealth. In reply to questions he declared himself 
resolutely opposed to the boss system, and deter- 
mined to break it by promoting the election to 
office of men who shared his views. 

After seven weeks spent in the necessary 
speech -making throughout the State, Mr. Wilson 
was, on November 8th, elected Governor of New 
Jersey with a plurality of nearly fifty thousand 
votes. At the Presidential election three years 
before the Republican plurality had been over 
eighty thousand. The elections for Senate and 
Assembly gave the Democrats control of the latter, 
with a majority on a joint ballot of the two 
chambers, but the Republicans retained command 
of the Senate. The actual figures were : Senate, 



GOVERNOR OF NEW JERSEY 51 

Republican by 1 2 to 9 ; Assembly, Democratic 
by 42 to 18. 

The new Governor's principles were early put to 
the test. The Democratic boss, James Smith, 
had represented New Jersey in the Senate of the 
United States, and meant to represent it again 
whenever there was a prospect of a Democratic 
majority in the two houses of the State Legislature, 
with whom the actual election to the Senate at 
Washington rested. Of that Mr. Wilson was well 
aware, and having his own opinion of the boss's 
political record, he had made it a condition of 
his acceptance of the candidature for the 
Governorship that Mr. Smith should not run on 
the sam^e ticket as candidate for the Senate. Mr. 
Smith agreed, and at the primary at which the 
party candidates for the various offices were 
appointed the popular choice of the Democrats 
for the Senatorship fell on one James E. Martine. 
Mr. Martine having thus become the official party 
nominee, it was certain that if the forthcoming 
elections should yield a Democratic majority in 
the State Legislature the State Legislature would 
send Mr. Martine to Washington. 

The result of the poll did, as has been seen, 
yield a joint Democratic majority of twenty-one 
in the two houses, owing largely to the advantage 
accruing to Democratic candidates from associa- 
tion on the same ticket with so strong a nominee 
for the Governorship as Dr. Wilson. When this 
became clear Mr. James Smith's ideas on the 
Senatorship rapidly changed. His health, which 
he had advanced as a guarantee of his good faith 



52 PRESIDENT WILSON 

when he assured Mr. Wilson he was not a candi- 
date for Washington, suddenly improved. He 
decided, in short, that when the Legislature went 
through the formality of electing a United States 
Senator the Democratic majority should vote, not 
for Martine, the choice of the people, but for 
Smithy the choice of Smith. Whatever term may 
be applicable to sharp practice of this kind, the 
manoeuvre was not definitely unconstitutional, and 
there seemed no reason to suppose that a party 
boss of the power of ex -Senator Smith would 
find it difficult to enforce his will. 

A reason, however, there was, incarnated in 
the resolute personality of the new Governor, 
When the would-be Senator first mentioned his 
intention to Dr. Wilson the latter was amazed at 
the proposal, and before dismissing the subject, 
as he quickly did, entered an emphatic protest 
against so flagrant a disregard of the popular 
decision. Mr. Smith, none the less, proceeded 
with his candidature. Public opinion was sharply 
divided, less on the ethics of the proceeding than 
on the power of the machine to carry its man 
through, and all sections looked to the Governor 
for a lead. Dr. Wilson gave Smith to understand 
that unless a written assurance of his withdrawal 
was forthcoming within forty -eight hours he would 
denounce him publicly. The hour fixed brought 
no message, and the next day's papers contained 
a plain and emphatic statement of the Governor's 
views on the Senatorship question. Nor did he 
stop at a newspaper statement. Before the Legis- 
lature met he had addressed crowded public m«et- 



GOVERNOR OF NEW JERSEY 53 

ings in the chief cities of the State, insisting, 
not on the personal qualifications of Martine 
against Smith, but on the right of the people 
to have its decision carried out. When the 
Houses voted Martine was sent to Washington ; 
Smith was beaten out of the field. It is note- 
worthy that where the average Governor in such 
a case would have confined himself to caucusing 
with the legislators Mr. Wilson went direct to 
the people. His action was in complete con- 
sonance with th^ doctrine he enunciated in the 
course of this particular campaign : " Absolute 
good faith in dealing with the people, an un- 
hesitating fidelity to every principle avowed, is 
the highest law of political morafity under a 
constitutional government . ' ' 

This initial and signal victory over the 
political machine was a fitting prelude to an 
administration that stamped the public life of 
New Jersey with the personality of its Governor 
to a degree unprecedented in its history. The 
traditional severance between executive and 
legislative functions in the Constitution both of 
the Union and of the several States carries with 
it the inherent defect of leaving the legislature 
in either case comparatively leaderless. The 
President and his Ministers cannot sit in Con- 
gress ; the Governor cannot sit in the State 
Legislature. Consequently the man supremely 
responsible for administering the law^ and there- 
fore supremely alive to the need for legislative 
changes and reforms, has no direct means of 
laying his view before the legislative body except 



54 PRESIDENT WILSON 

through the ineffective medium of an occasional 
personal message, usually transmitted in writing. 
Constructive leadership under such conditions is 
almost — ^though not, as Mr. Wilson and a few- 
other Governors have shown, entirely — impossible. 
Congress at Washington and the Legislatures in 
the State capitals tend alike to be controlled by 
a party caucus and dominated by gtoups repre- 
senting various material interests, and directly 
susceptible to the vigorous lobbying of individuals 
and corporations intent on securing some profit- 
able concession or effecting the defeat of regu- 
lative and restrictive legislation. 

Of these dangers Mr. Wilson was acutely con- 
scious. As far back as 1897, when he was still 
a Princeton professor, he had expressed his con- 
viction in an address to the Virginia State Bar 
Association that " successful Governments have 
never been conducted safely in the midst of com- 
plex and critical affairs, except when guided by 
those who were responsible for carrying* out and 
bringing to an issue the measures they proposed ; 
and the separation of the right to plan from the 
duty to execute has always led to blundering and 
inefficiency." That conviction did not ^row 
weaker as the speaker's experience matured, and 
when he found himself Governor of a State 
numbering two and a half million citizens he 
found the problem confronting him in a very 
concrete form. Since a revolutionary recasting of 
the State Constitution was not to be considered, it 
remained to make the best of the system as it 
stood. In that purpose the Governor's one asset 



GOVERNOR OF NEW JERSEY 55 

was his own force of character and indifference to 
tradition. To these quaHties was soon added his 
victory in the matter of the Senatorship, a success 
that was manifestly the earnest of further success. 
While he conceived himself, and not a political 
boss, to be the rightful leader of his party in the 
State, he regarded himself in almost equal degree 
as the representative of the whole electorate — as 
in his executive capacity he constitutionally was — 
and he had no intention of allowing party 
antagonisms to militate against either adminis- 
trative or legislative efficiency. By 1910 the 
Progressive, or radical, section of the Republican 
Party was making itself felt throughout the Union, 
and Governor Wilson early scandalized the more 
hidebound of his supporters by taking counsel 
with the leaders of the New Jersey Progressives, 
whose support he had strong hope of enlisting 
for liis programme of social reform. 

What that programme was had been stated in 
the Governor's speech of acceptance. Its chief 
heads may profitably be recalled, for comparison 
with the actual legislative record registered during 
Mr. Wilson's first year of office. They concerned 
reorganization and economy in administration ; 
the equalization of taxation ; the control of cor- 
porations ; employers' liability; corrupt practices 
at elections ; and conservation. Redemption of 
the pledges that constituted this formidable plat- 
form began early in the session of 1911, with a 
measure introducing the system of the direct 
primary (i.e. a direct popular vote as opposed 
to the traditional series of packed delegations and 



5 6 PRESIDENT WILSON 

caucuses) for the nomination of the party candi- 
dates for every public office, from President of 
the United States down to the humblest local 
official. The whole machinery of party nomina- 
tion would, under the terms of the Geran Bill (the 
measure bore the name of the Assemblyman who 
introduced it), be as much under the control and 
direction of the State as the actual election itself. 
The passage of such a measure appeared to spell 
the inevitable doom of party bosses and machine 
rule ; and so in a measure it did_, though in most 
electoral areas politicians adept at wire-pulling 
have revealed sufficient fertility of resource to find 
means for retaining, even under the Geran Act, 
something of their threatened domination. Such 
a Bill was assured of an organized and desperate 
opposition. Prophets of established reputation 
foretold a debdcle for the Governor. A con- 
ference of dissentient Democrats and Republicans 
was called to concert the defeat of the measure. 
Governor Wilson invited himself to the conference 
and addressed it for four hours. He did not kill 
the opposition, but he detached from it every 
legislator responsive to the appeal of political 
morality and democratic principle. The Geran 
Bill went through the Assembly by what, for so 
bitterly contested a measure, was almost a 
luxurious majority. In the Senate, where its 
rejection was counted as certain, it had a passage 
of unruffled tranquiUity. The first undertaking 
in the platform programme was redeemed. 

The further measures of the session of 1 9 1 1 
need not be considered in intimate detail. A 



GOVERNOR OF NEW JERSEY 57 

Corrupt Practices Act required the publication of 
election expenses ; prohibited contributions by 
corporations to party funds ; forbade betting on 
results and treating by candidates ; and imposed 
on candidates a statutory maximum of expendi- 
ture. Together with the Geran Act, the measure 
went far towards transforming the political 
atmosphere of New Jersey. 

The drafting of an Employers' Liability Bill 
presented some difficulties, owing to recent legal 
decisions in another State raising doubts as to the 
constitutionality of a compulsory measure on the 
English model. The New Jersey Bill, therefore, 
was so drawn as to impose liability on the 
employer in the absence of a specific agreement 
to the contrary between master and man. In 
actual working practically no advantage has been 
taken of the loophole thus offered for contracting 
out. The Act is in almost universal application 
throughout tke State, and has been quoted by 
high legal authorities as a model for other State 
legislatures. 

There remained the re|;ulation of corporations. 
State and municipal trading has made little head- 
way in America, most of the public services which 
in this country are under popular ownership and 
direction being discharged under contract by 
private corporations. Hence the ceaseless stream 
of scheming, lobbying, and intriguing by gas 
companies, power companies, street -car com- 
panies, railroads, road -cleaning contractors, and 
the like, by which legislators, municipal, State, 
and Federalj in America are exposed to perpetual 



SS PRESIDENT WILSON 

temptation to corruption of varying degree. That 
is not the only evil effect of the system. Fran- 
chises, or contracts, conferred by the Legislature 
may be paid for directly by secret commissions to 
the members of a Senate or Assembly, or in- 
directly by contributions to party funds (very 
often to the funds of both parties simultaneously), 
and that outlay is possible largely because the 
successful company can always recoup itself in 
enhanced charges to the consumer. 

On both grounds Governor Wilson was abund- 
antly justified in his endeavour to put the relations 
of legislators and corporations on a different 
footing. The first measure directed to that end 
was a Public Utilities Bill, establishing a Public 
Utilities Commission such as was created about the 
same time in a number of other States. The 
purpose of the commissions is, as an x^merican 
constitutional writer ' succinctly puts it, " to 
divorce all corporate regulation from politics by 
taking it out of the hands of the Legislature and 
placing it in the control of a small adminis- 
trative body." Such a commission, consisting 
usually of not more than four members, has 
jurisdiction over water, gas, telephone, tramway, 
railway, lighting, and similar companies, with 
power to regulate their operations and control 
their charges, having regard equally to the interests 
of the consumer and of the company shareholder, 
and to investigate their finances and supervise 
new issues of capital. 

The institution of a Public Utilities Commis- 

• Young, The Neiu American Government and its Work, chap, xviii. 



GOVERNOR OF NEW JERSEY 59 

sion in New Jersey was one of the chief products 
of the first legislative session of Dr. Wilson's 
Governorship. Its effect has been all that was 
looked for in the purification of public life and 
the protection of the interest of the consumer. 
With the Public Utilities Bill was associated a 
similar measure providing for the reform of 
municipal administration by the adoption of the 
commission form of city government. That 
system involves the supersession of the municipal 
council of the old type, whose members are elected 
on party lines, and subject to the constant solici- 
tations of corporations and their agents, in favour 
of a small commission, presided over by a salaried 
mayor, which administers all the affairs of the 
city, often acquiring and running by direct labour 
such necessary enterprises as waterworks and 
electric plant. The commissioners are elected 
for a two or three year term by a direct popular 
vote, which appears in most cases to have been 
successfully emancipated from party influences. 
The commission system, which the 1 9 1 1 Act 
made voluntary, not mandatory, was in 1 9 1 5 in 
operation in twenty-four New Jersey cities, in- 
cluding Atlantic City, Jersey City, Trenton, and 
Hoboken. Only three States of the Union had a 
larger number of municipalities so governed. 

The measures so far enumerated do not com- 
prise the whole harvest of 191 i, and the harvest 
of 191 I does not comprise the whole yield of 
Mr. Wilson's Governorship ; but between the 
close of that session and his resignation on 
becoming President of the United States in 19 13, 



6o PRESIDENT WILSON 

his power of legislative initiative and direction 
at Trenton was seriously curtailed. The elections 
to the Senate and Assembly in November 1 9 1 1 
resulted in a Republican victory, and when the 
Governor met the new Legislature in March 1 9 1 2 
he found his political opponents in command. 
The handicap was less serious than it would have 
been under normal conditions. Mr. Wilson had 
never exaggerated party distinctions, and he had 
made it a regular practice to consult as freely 
with individual Republicans as with individual 
Democrats. None the less his influence over the 
houses was inevitably less than in the previous 
year, and in the remaining twelve months of his 
Governorship the legislative output fell off. That 
was not necessarily an evil. The main reforms 
Dr. Wilson had had in view were already effected, 
and, in any case, efficient administration was as 
important as sound legislation. The chief 
measure of 1 9 1 2, an attempt to reorganize the 
various State boards and commissions on a basis 
of economy and efficiency, was largely vitiated 
by the Legislature, but in the following year the 
Governor's last official message, an appeal for 
the further regulation of corporations, led directly 
to the formulation and passage into law of the 
series of Bills known as the Seven Sisters, directed 
to the protection of the public from exploitation 
by trusts and combinations, and of shareholders 
from the manipulation and watering of stock. 

It is too soon to decide how far the laws have 
carried out the purpose of their framer. He 
himself did not remain at Trenton long enough 



GOVERNOR OF NEW JERSEY 6i 

to give them his official assent. By the time it 
fell to his successor to put his name to the Bills 
Dr. Woodrow Wilson was in residence at the 
White House as President of the United States. 
His record as Governor tells its own story. For 
comment it is sufficient to quote three brief but 
characteristic verdicts, published during his term 
of office, the first from a Canadian newspaper, the 
second from an American, the third from a 
British . 

" Dr. Wilson's five moaths' record " (written in 
191 I ) "as Governor of New Jersey have shown 
that he is an idealist who can down the politicians 
and get results." 

" He is a giant, who will go far in American 
politics." 

" To read Mr. Wilson's speeches, to study his 
acts, to talk with the man himself, is to be filled 
with a new hope for American politics. . . . 
There was [in his campaign speeches] none of 
the usual party claptrap and vituperation, no effort 
to keep alive meaningless party lines or tradi- 
tions, no dealing in sonorous generalities. From 
first to last Mr. Wilson appealed to reason and 
to conscience." 

More weighty and authoritative judgments on 
the Governor of New Jersey could be quoted,' but 

' It is worth while appending here an extract of some length from 
a speech of Mr. Wilson's, delivered during the Presidential campaign 
of 1912, while he was still Governor of New Jersey : — 

" Let me tell the story of the emancipation of one State — New 
Jersey. It has surprised the people of the United States to find New 
Jersey at the front in enterprises of reform. I, who have lived in 
New Jersey the greater part of my mature life, know that there is 



62 PRESIDENT WILSON 

these will suffice. And out of the Governor the 
President was born. 

no State in the Union which, so far as the hearts and intelligence 
of its people are concerned, has more earnestly desired reform than 
has New Jersey. There are men who have been prominent in the 
affairs of the State who again and again advocated, with all the 
earnestness that was in them, the things that we have at last been 
able to do. There are men in New Jersey who have spent some ot 
the best energies of their lives in trying to win elections in order to 
get the support of t'.ie citizens of New Jersey for programmes of 
reform. 

' ' The people had voted or such things very often before the 
autumn of 1910, but the interesting thing is that nothing happened. 
They were demanding the benefit of remedial measures such as had 
been passed in every progressive State of the Union, measures which 
had proved not only that they did not upset the life of the communities 
to which they were applied, but that they quickened every force and 
bettered every condition in those communities. But the people of 
New Jersey could not get them, and there had come upon them a 
certain pessimistic despair. I used to meet men who shrugged their 
shoulders and said : ' What difference does it make how we vote ? 
Nothing ever results from our votes.' The force that is behind the 
new party that has recently been formed, the so-called ' Progressive 
Party,' is a force of discontent with the old parties of the United 
States. It is the feeling that men have gone into blind alleys often 
enough, and that somehow there must be found an open road through 
which men may pass to some purpose. 

" In the year 1910 there came a day when the people of New 
Jersey took heart to believe that something could be accomplished. 
I had no merit as a candidate for Governor, except that I said what 
I really thought, and the compliment that the people paid me was in 
believing that I meant what I said. Unless they had believed in 
the Governor whom they then elected, unless they had trusted him 
deeply and altogether, he could have done absolutely nothing. The 
force of the public men of a nation lies in the faith and the backing 
of the people of the country, rather than in any gifts of their own. 
In proportion as you trust them, in proportion as you back them up, 
in proportion as you lend them your strength, are they strong. The 
things that have happened in New Jersey since 1910 have happened 
because the seed was planted in this fine fertile soil of confidence, of 
trust, of renewed hope. 

"The moment the forces in New Jersey that had resisted reform 
realized that the people were backing new men who meant what they 



GOVERNOR OF NEW JERSEY 63 

had said, they realized that they dare not resist them. It was not 
the personal force of the new officials ; it was the moral strength of 
their backing that accomplished the extraordinary result. 

"And what was accomplished? Mere justice to classes that had 
not been treated justly before. Every schoolboy in the State of 
New Jersey, if he cared to look into the matter, could comprehend 
the fact that the laws applying to labouring-men with respect of 
compensation when they were hurt in their various employments had 
originated at a time when society was organized very differently from 
the way in which it is organized now, and that because the law had 
not been changed, the courts were obliged to go blindly on administer- 
ng laws which were cruelly unsuitable to existing conditions, so 
that it was practically impossible for the working-men of New Jersey 
to get justice from the courts ; the legislature of the commonwealth 
had not come to their assistance with the necessary legislation. No- 
body seriously debated the circumstances ; everybody knew that the 
law was antiquated and impossible; everybody knew that justice 
waited to be done. Very well, then, why wasn't it done? 

" There was another thing that we wanted to do: We wanted to 
regulate our public service corporations so that we could get the 
proper service for them, and on reasonable terms. That had been 
done elsewhere, and where it had been done it had proved just as 
much for the benefit of the corporations themselves as for the benefit 
of the people. Of course it was somewhat difficult to convince the 
corporations. It happened that one of the men who knew the least 
about the subject was the president of the Public Service Corporation 
of New Jersey. I have heard speeches from that gentleman that 
exhibited a total lack of acquaintance with the circumstances of our 
times. I have never known ignorance so complete in its detail ; and, 
being a man of force and ignorance, he naturally set all his energy to 
resist the things that he did not comprehend. 

" I am not interested in questioning the motives oi men in such 
positions. I am only sorry that they don't know more. If they 
would only join the procession they would find themselves benefited 
by the healthful exercise, which, for one thing, would renew within 
them the capacity to learn which I hope they possessed when they 
were younger. We were not trying to do anything novel in New 
Jersey in regulating the Public Service Corporation ; we were simply 
trying to adopt there a tested measure of public justice. We adopted 
it. Has anybody gone bankrupt since ? Does anybody now doubt 
that it was just as much for the benefit of the Public Service Corpora- 
tion as for the people of the State ? 

" Then there was another thing that we modestly desired : We 
wanted fair elections ; we did not want candidates to buy themselves 



64 



PRESIDENT WILSON 



into oftice. That seemed reasonable. So we adopted a law, unique 
in one particular, namely : that if you bought an office, you didn't get 
it. I admit that that is contrary to all commercial principles, but I 
think it is pretty good political doctrine. It is all very well to put 
a man in jail for buying an office, but it is very much better, besides 
putting him in jail, to show him that if he has paid out a single dollar 
for that office, he does not get it, though a huge majority voted for 
him. We reversed the laws of trade ; when you buy something in 
politics in New Jersey, you do not get it. It seemed to us that that 
was the best way of discouraging improper political argument. If 
your money does not produce the goods, then you are not tempted to 
spend your money. 

"We adopted a Corrupt Practices Act, the reasonable foundation 
of which no man could question, and an Election Act, which every 
man predicted was not going to work, but which did work — to the 
emancipation of the voters of New Jersey. 

"All these things are now commonplaces with us. We like the 
laws that we have passed, and no man ventures to suggest any material 
change in them. Why didn't we get them long ago ? What hindered 
us ? Why, we had a closed Government ; not an open Government. 
It did not belong to us. It was managed by little groups of men 
whose names we know, but whom somehow we didn't seem able to 
dislodge. When we elected men pledged to dislodge them, they 
only went into partnership with them. When the people had taken 
over control of the Government, a curious change was wrought in the 
souls of a great many men ; a sudden moral awakening took place, 
and we simply could not find culprits against whom to bring indict- 
ments : it was like a Sunday School the way they obeyed the laws" 
( The New Freedom y chap. x). 



CHAPTER IV 
THE 1912 ELECTION 

What the country will demand of the candidate will be, not that 
he be an astute politician, skilled and practised in affairs, but that 
he be a man such as it can trust, in character, in intention, in know- 
ledge of its needs, in perception of the best means by which those 
needs can be met, in capacity to prevail by reason of his own weight 
and integrity. — Constitutional Government in U.S.A. (1908). 

Dr. Woodrow Wilson was not the obvious 
Democratic candidate in 191 2. That title could' 
more properly be claimed by Mr. W. J. Bryan, 
who had three times carried the party standard to 
defeat, in 1896, 1900, and 1908 ; or by Mr. 
Champ Clark, Speaker of the House of Repre- 
sentatives. But neither was Dr. Wilson an 
eleventh -hour choice. Even before his election 
as Governor of New Jersey discerning politicians 
had written him down as a future candidate for 
the highest office in the Union. Some of them 
had given open expression to their predictions. 
As far back as 1906, when Mr. Wilson was 
hardly half way throug'h his eight years' Presi- 
dency at Princeton, Colonel George Harvey, editor 
then of Harper's Weekly and now of the North 
American Review, had associated his name with 
the Presidency of the United States, referring to 
him as " a man combining the activities of the 

5 



66 PRESIDENT WILSON 

present with the sobering influences of the past," 
and as uniting in his personality " the finest 
instinct of true statesmanship as the effect of 
his early environment, and the no less valuable 
capacity for practical application achieved through 
subsequent endeavours in another field." ' Five 
years later, in March 191 1, the same authority, in 
discussing the rift in the Democratic Party, and 
the improbability of the election of Mr. Bryan_, 
again proposed as the ideal candidate " Woodrow 
Wilson, the highly Americanized Scotch -Irishman, 
descended from Ohio, born in Virginia, developed 
in Maryland, married in Georgia, and now deliver- 
ing from bondage that faithful old Democratic 
Commonwealth, the State of New Jersey." ^ 

If the earlier appreciation was in advance of 
contemporary party opinion, the latter faithfully 
reflected it. The election of Mr. Wilson to the 
Governorship of New Jersey, and the vigour of 
his administration from the day of his assumption 
of office, brought his personality under searching 
public scrutiny, and a large section of the Demo- 
cratic Party were already convinced that in the 
New Jersey Governor they had found the pre- 
ordained candidate for an election which promised, 
owing to the Republican split, to introduce to the 
White House the second Democratic President 
since the Civil War. In the same year, 191 1, 
Mr. Wilson, who took the position that he was 
justified neither in seeking nor in declining the 
weighty responsibilities of Presidential office, con- 

' Address to Lotos Club of New York, February 1906. 
' Address to Hibernian Society of SaY3.nn3.h, G» 



THE 19 1 2 ELECTION 6-j 

sented to address a series of meetings through 
the Middle and Far West, and in January 19 12, 
by a powerful speech delivered at the Jackson 
Day banquet at Washington in the presence of 
members of the Democratic National Committee, 
confirmed the hold he had already established on 
a growing section of the party throughout the 
Union. The support accorded to the prospective 
candidate was essentially popular and spontaneous. 
He had no command over the national party 
machine. A campaign organization was estab- 
lished in his interest by one of his old Princeton 
pupils, Mr. William F. Mc Combs, of New York, 
subsequently Chairman of the Democratic National 
Committee, and at the National Convention at 
Baltimore in June 1912 the New Jersey deleg'a- 
tion brought forward the name of their State 
Governor for President . 

For what principles did the Democratic Party 
stand in national politics in 1 9 1 2 ? The question 
cannot be answered without some reference to the 
history of party divisions in America. The two 
great opposing sections date back under different 
names to the first administration of the Republic. 
The antagonistic forces in Washington's Cabinet 
were represented by Hamilton and Jefferson, the 
one standing for the concentration of power in 
the hands of the central Government, the other 
for a jealous guardianship of the rights of the 
individual States. Hamilton, with Washington 
giving him such tacit support as his high position 
permitted, headed the Federalists, Jefferson the 
party at first known as Democratic -Republicans, 



68 PRESIDENT WILSON 

then as Republicans, and for the last ninety years 
as Democrats. The Federalists were in power 
for the first three Presidential terms (i 789-1801), 
but with Jefferson's election in 1800 a long term 
of Republican success at the polls began. 
Federalism had disappeared from American 
politics by about 1 8 1 5, and for the next ten 
or twelve years (the " Era of Good Feeling ") 
a single party held the field. Out of the con- 
troversies that marked John Quincy Adams's 
election in 1824 a new grouping arose, and 
Andrew Jackson was elected for the first of his 
two terms in 1828 as a Democrat, the opposition, 
headed by Henry Clay, acquiring the name of 
Whig. 

Whigs and Democrats divided office and 
spoils till the middle fifties, when attempts to 
hedge on the slavery question worked the disso- 
lution of the Whigs. Their traditions were 
bequeathed to the great party that opposes the 
Democrats to-day. Fremont ran unsuccessfully 
for the Presidency as a Republican in 1856 and 
Lincoln successfully in i860. Since that day 
there has been no new party alignment, despite 
periodic threats of secession and disintegration in 
either camp. While party nomenclature has 
changed, the broad lines of division have been 
in the main preserved. The two sections may 
with rough accuracy be described as apostles of 
centripetal and apostles of centrifugal action ; 
Federalists and States Rights men ; the party of 
Order and the party of Liberty ; loose construc- 
tionists (of the terms of the Constitution) and 



THE 191 2 ELECTION 69 

strict constructionists ; conservatives and radicals ; 
but always with the proviso that distinctions valid 
over a period of generations may be found to 
have little application to the situation existing 
at particular moments. In recent years the 
demarcation has become increasingly indetermi- 
nate, and the only generalization on which it 
would be safe to venture is that of the parties 
of the twentieth century the Republicans stand, 
in principle at least, for a strong central Govern- 
ment and a high protective tariff ; the Democrats 
for the rights of the individual State and a tariff 
for revenue only. It may perhaps be added that 
Republicans are, on the whole, more favourably 
disposed than Democrats towards an Imperialist 
policy, a question that has become more imme- 
diate since the acquisition by America of overseas 
dominions as a consequence of the war with Spain. 
The Democratic Party met in its National Con- 
vention at Baltimore in 19 1 2 uncommitted to any 
definite constructive policy. It had been so long 
in a minority that opposition had almost come to 
be regarded as its main function. The contro- 
versy on the free coinage of silver had receded 
into the background, and on the tariff question 
the attitude of the party was so fixed by tradition 
that no new issue arose. The Democrats, like 
the Republicans, though in a less marked degree, 
were divided into conservatives and radicals, the 
latter represented by Mr. W. J. Bryan, of 
Nebraska, who had run unsuccessfully for the 
Presidency against McKinley in 1896 and 1900 
and against Taft in 1908. The "platform" 



70 PRESIDENT WILSON 

adopted on July 2nd was calculated to consolidate 
the support of all sections of the party. It called, 
inter alia, for downward revision of the tariff ; 
anti-trust legislation ; the institution of Presi- 
dential primaries (i.e. the expression by each 
voter in the party of his personal preferenqe 
instead of the existing nominations by conven- 
tions of delegates) ; a federal income-tax; pub- 
licity of campaign contributions ; restriction of 
a President's tenure to a single term ; rural 
credits ; free passage through the Panama Canal 
for coastwise shipping ; conservation of national 
resources ; independence for the Philippines " as 
soon as a stable Government can be established." 

A Party Convention in America is an institution 
siii generis. Its main business is to formulate 
a platform and adopt a candidate. It is composed 
of a specified number of delegates from each 
State, and one of the first duties of the Committee 
on Credentials, appointed at the beginning of the 
Convention, is to scrutinize the claims of the 
rival delegations in cases where a party division 
in a State has resulted in the dispatch to the 
Convention of two sets of delegates. When those 
preliminaries have been settled, and extravagant 
speeches of nomination have been duly enunciated 
and elaborately applauded by each potential can- 
didate's supporters, the solid business of balloting 
is taken in hand. 

The first day or two devoted to that process 
is of little account. While there are usually 
three or four outstanding candidates, on one 
of whom the final choice is certain to fall. 



THE 1 91 2 ELECTION 71 

every Convention produces a crowd of secondary 
runners, most of them " favourite sons," men 
prominent in local politics but unknown outside 
their own State. The effect of the running of a 
number of candidates is a wide scattering' of votes 
on the early ballots, making it extremely unlikely 
that any one of the candidates will in the first 
instance obtain the total necessary for election, 
a two -thirds majority being required in a Demo- 
cratic Convention and a bare majority in a Repub- 
lican. The voting therefore proceeds towards a 
decision through the gradual transference of 
support in the successive ballots from the candi- 
dates at the bottom to one of the two or three 
at the top, a manoeuvre stimulated by assiduous 
solicitation and bargaining on the part of the 
bosses running the candidates high on the list. 

At Baltimore the more prominent nominees 
included Governor Woodrow Wilson, of New- 
Jersey ; Governor Harmon, of Ohio; and Champ 
Clark, of Missouri, Speaker of the House of 
Representatives. The voting on the early ballots 
favoured Clark:, who ran head for some time, 
actually commanding a clear majority of the Con- 
vention (though not the necessary two -thirds) on 
eight separate votes. He failed to hold his position 
and Mr. Wilson's total was steadily rising, when 
Mr. Bryan, whose influence with the advanced 
wing of the party was great, threw his support 
on to Mr. Wilson's side. On the forty -sixth ballot 
Wilson was chosen Democratic candidate for the 
November contest. It must be put on solemn 
record that when Governor Wilson was first nomi- 



72 PRESIDENT WILSON 

nated early in the Convention his name was 
cheered for one hour and fifteen minutes, as. 
against one hour and five minutes of applause 
for Mr. Champ Clark. Both candidates, however, 
had a less enthusiastic reception than that 
accorded to Mr. Br^^an in the 1908 Convention, 
when voices, feet, and arms saluted him for one 
hour and twenty -seven minutes on end. 

By the first week in August Mr. Wilson had in 
the field agiainst him the official Republican 
nominee, President William H. Taft, and Mr. 
Roosevelt, running as a Progressive. There was 
little prospect of Mr. Roosevelt's election. He 
had served practically the whole of two Presi- 
dential terms, and no candidate had ever so far 
triumphed over the fixed sentiment ag'ainst a third 
term as to secure himself twelve years of office. 
The result of the split he effected in the Repub- 
lican Party by detaching the radical wing and 
creating a new " Progressive " organization could 
only be to ensure Mr. Taft's defeat as well as 
his own. 

The cleavage is to be attributed to no single 
cause. Personality had a good deal to do 
with it, Mr. Taft was an able and upright 
President, but he inspired no enthusiasm. He 
had, moreover, alienated important interests by 
his attitude on the tariff and on Canadian Reci- 
procity. His predecessor and opponent with a 
restless and quixotic temper combined a genuine 
enthusiasm for social reform — provided it followed 
his own prescribed formulae — which gained him 
a considerable following among the more 



THE 191 2 ELECTION T2> 

advanced sections of the old Republican Party. 
The Progressive platform was a curious amalgam 
of the Republican and the Democratic. Mr. Taft 
stood on his own record as President, reinforced 
by a programme of trust prosecution, currency 
reform, conservation, and a strong' Navy. The 
Progressives, meeting in Convention at Chicago 
after both the Republicans and the Democrats, 
issued a voluminous statement demanding exten- 
sive ameliorative action by the Central Govern- 
ment and the fullest measure of direct popular 
control over election and legislation. 

Mr. Wilson, in his acceptance speech to the 
delegation that conveyed a formal intimation of 
his choice by the Convention, substantially en- 
dorsed the Convention platform (though, as his 
subsequent action showed, he did not hold him- 
self bound by it), and emphasized in particular 
the need of so directing the currency reform 
measures as to consult the interests of farmers 
and merchants as well as bankers, and of " setting 
up the rule of justice and right in respect of 
such matters as the tariff, control of trusts, and 
labour legislation." 

The four months intervening between the earlier 
Conventions and the elections at the beginning 
of November were devoted to the usual oratorical 
tours throughout the Union. Mr. Wilson's cam- 
paign speeches, their permanent value empha- 
sized by the excision of passages of purely 
ephemeral importance, have been preserved in 
the volume edited by Mr. W. B. Hale, and 
entitled The New Freedom. As the campaign 



74 PRESIDENT WILSON 

ran its course it became increasingly clear that 
the Democratic candidate had victory in sight, 
though the abortive attempt of a demented 
Socialist to assassinate Mr. Roosevelt at 
Milwaukee in October gave a momentary impetus 
to the Progressive canvass. 

The procedure followed at a Presidential 
election is to be ascribed to the attempt of the 
framers of the American Constitution to place 
the choice of President in the hands of men of 
proved integrity and sober judgment, who would 
select the occupant of the White House under a 
due sense of responsibility and with minds 
detached from the turmoil of party politics. 
Accordingly the election was made indirect. The 
voters of each State, instead of choosing a Presi- 
dent, chose electoral delegates, with whom the 
selection of a President would rest. The number 
of delegates was to be equal to that of the State's 
representation in the Senate and House of Repre- 
sentatives combined. Since every State, great 
or small, sends two representatives to the Senate, 
but is represented in the House on the basis of 
population (from New York, which returns forty - 
three members, to New Mexico, which returns one), 
it follows that the electoral college is also chosen 
on what is practically a population basis. New 
York has forty -five electoral votes and Penn- 
sylvania thirty -eight, while Delaware, Nevada, 
Wyoming, and others still stand at the irreducible 
minimum of three. 

The theory of an election uninfluenced by party 
politics had broken down before the Republic 



THE 1912 ELECTION 75 

had been in being for a dozen years. The Presi- 
dential candidates to-day — and it has been the 
same for generations back — ^are chosen by the 
Party Conventions, and though the individual 
citizen cannot vote for his party candidate direct, 
he can vote for a panel of electors pledged to 
the party ticket. The elections for the electoral 
college are conducted on purely party lines. In 
Illinois, for example, which sends twenty-nine 
members to the electoral college, the voter is 
confronted at the polling-booth in November with 
a Democratic ticket of twenty -nine names and 
a Republican ticket of another twenty -nine. In 
191 2 there was a Progressive ticket in addition. 
Though it is open to him to vote for some 
nominees of each party, solid voting is the almost 
unbroken rule, and since each man on the electoral 
panel chosen is pledged to cast his vote (in the 
following January) for the nominee of his party, 
it is known at once that a Democratic victory in 
Illinois means twenty -nine votes for the Demo- 
cratic candidate for the White House. The 
election, therefore, is virtually by States. As 
an expression of the popular opinion it is gravely 
imperfect, in that the minority in any State is 
entirely unrepresented. Thus in New York on 
one occasion a majority of no more than eleven 
hundred out of a poll of over a million gave the 
whole of the State representation of thirty -six 
(as it then was) to the Democratic candidate, 
while the Republican minority, consisting of over 
49 per cent, of the electors polling, commanded 
not one electoral vote. In the Southern States, 



76 PRESIDENT WILSOfT 

where the Democrats are svipreme, it is a waste 
of time for the Republicans to go to the polls, 
since they can nowhere secure a State majority, 
and are consequently entirely unrepresented in 
the electoral college. 

A further effect of the system is that the 
popular vote rarely bears any recognizable rela- 
tion to the electoral vote, since the party gaining 
a series of small majorities in populous States 
like New York or Pennsylvania or Illinois secures 
not merely a proportionate majority, but the whole 
State vote, in the electoral college. In the light 
of these facts the remarkable result of the 191 2 
election becomes intelligible. In every State Mr. 
Taft and Mr. Roosevelt split the Republican vote 
and the Democratic went to Mr. Wilson. As a 
result, in forty States out of the forty-eight the 
Democratic candidate headed the poll and secured 
the State vote in the electoral college, though the 
combined popular vote of his two opponents 
almost always exceeded his. The final result 
was declared as follows : — 

Wilson 

Roosevelt ... 

Taft 

Though the three other candidates who ran 
were of little importance, their record may be 
given for the sake of completeness : — 



Electoral Vote. 


Popular Vote. 


- 435 


6,286,987 


... 88 


4,125,804 


8 


3.475,813 





Electoral Vote. 


Popular Vote 


Debs (Socialist) 





895,892 


Chafin (Prohibition) 





2CX),772 


Rainier (See. -Lahoui) 





38,814 



THE 19 1 2 ELECTION -j-] 

Only two States, Vermont and Utah^ supported 
Mr. Taft, while Mr. Roosevelt carried Pennsyl- 
vania in the East, Michigan and Minnesota in the 
Middle West, and California, Washington, and 
South Dakota in the West. It was an astonishing' 
triumph for Mr. Wilson, 



CHAPTER V, 
THE NEW PRESIDENT'S PROSPECTS 

The feelings with which we face this new age of right and oppor- 
tunity sweep across our heartstrings like some air out of God's own 
presence, where justice and mercy are reconciled and the judge and 
the brother are one. We know our task to be no mere task of 
politics, but a task which shall search us through and through, 
whether we be able to understand our time and the need of our 
people, whether we be indeed their spokesmen and interpreters, 
whether we have the pure heart to comprehend and the rectified will 
to choose our high course of action. This is not a day of triumph ; 
it is a day of dedication. Here muster, not the forces of party, but 
the forces of humanity. Men's hearts wait upon us ; men's lives 
hang in the balance ; men's hopes call upon us to say what we will 
do. Who shall live up to the great trust ? Who dares fail to try ? 
I summon all honest men, all patriotic, all forward-looking men, to 
my side. God helping me, I will not fail them, if they will but 
counsel and sustain me. — First Inaugural. March 191 3. 

Mr. Wilson's position on his assumption of office 
in March 19 13 was in one respect strong, in 
another equivocal. He was under the disad- 
vantage, more apparent indeed than real, of being 
a minority President. Apart from the million 
odd votes divided between the Socialist and other 
minor candidates, he had polled a g*ood million 
and a third less than the combined totals of Mr. 
Roosevelt and Mr. Taft. On the other hand, he 
found himself supported in the Sixty -third Con- 
gress, which succeeded to power simultaneously 

7« 



THE NEW. PRESIDENT'S PROSPECTS 79 

with himself, by a Democratic majority in both 
Houses. The importance of that backing lay 
in the fact that all Bills must be passed by both 
Houses and approved by the President, and a 
difference in political colour between President 
and Congress, or between the two branches of 
the latter, makes inevitably for legislative delay 
and friction. 

There was only one precedent since the 
Civil War for the complete enthronement of 
the Democrats. Cleveland, the one Democratic 
President since Buchanan, h^d a Republican 
majority against him in the Senate in both XTon- 
gresses (the Forty -ninth and Fiftieth) of his first 
term. In the first Congress of his second term 
(the Fifty-third) both Houses were Democratic, 
but the concurrence between executive and legis- 
lature was short-lived, for the Fifty-fourth Con- 
gress, 1895-7, was Repubhcan in both branches. 
It was reserved for Mr. Wilson's administration 
to revive the unremembered spectacle of Democ- 
racy dominant both at the White House and 
at the Capitol through the whole of a 
Presidential term. 

The announcement of the composition of the 
new Cabinet tended to confirm the President's 
hold over his party, and so over Congress. The 
two dhief posts were filled by Mr. Bryan and 
Mr. W. G. McAdoo, of New York, who in 191 4 
married the President's youngest daughter. Mr. 
Bryan's selection as Secretary of State was a fore- 
gone conclusion in view of the part he had played 
in securing Mr. Wilson's nomination in the Demo- 



8o PRESIDENT WILSON 

cratic Convention ; while Mr. McAdoo's claim to 
the Secretaryship of the Treasury was based 
largely on the impression he had created as a 
practical business man in carrying through the 
work of constructing the Hudson River tunnels. 
Mr. W. B. Wilson, the first Secretary of the 
newly constituted Department of Labour, was 
a miner and trade union leader of Scotch 
birth. I 

In estimating the prospects of the incoming 
President at the beginning of 1913 three factors 
had to be taken into account : the personality of 
Mr. Wilson himself, the nature of the concrete 
issues that confronted him, and the trend of 
developing political thought in America. The 
importance of the first of these had been strikingly 
demonstrated during Mr. Roosevelt's tenure of 
office. The ex -President in his autobiography 
throws into contrast the two ideals of the Presi- 
dency represented respectively by the Jackson - 
Lincoln and the Buchanan -Taft schools. It need 
hardly be added that he neither disguises his 
contempt for administrators of the latter class nor 
conceals the assertion of his own claim to rank 
with the former. In the seven and a half years 
of his administration Mr. Roosevelt had con- 

' The other places were filled as follows : — 

Secretary ofVVar ... ... Lindley M. Garrison (New Jersey). 

Attorney-General ... ... J- C. McReynolds (Tennessee). 

Postmaster-General ... ... Albert S. Burleson (Texas). 

Secretary of the Navy ... Josephus Daniels (North Carolina) 

Secretary of the Interior ... Franklin K. Lane (California). 

Secretary of Agriculture ... W. F. Houston (Missouri). 

Secretary ot Commerce ... W. C. Pedtield (New York). 



THE NEW PRESIDENT'S PROSPECTS 8i 

sistently lived up to his constitutional convictions. 
No President of recent times had initiated more 
formidable programmes of legislation, and no 
President had been more successful in bending 
Congress to his will. It is hardly too much to 
say that in the years 190 1-9 the doctrine of 
personal rule in the United States took on a colour 
it had not assumed since the days of Lincoln — and 
the circumstances of the Civil War were too 
abnormal to provide any valid precedent for the 
conduct of government in an ordinary Presidential 
term. 

With Mr. Taft's succession to office in 1909 
the balance of power had shifted. Mr. Roose- 
velt had been swept forward by the impulse 
of an impetuous radicalism. Mr. Taft was 
cautious, constitutional, and conservative, and 
temperamentally incapable of the personal domin- 
ance that his predecessor had so effectually 
exerted. Under his regime Congress reasserted 
itself. In the Lower House insurgent Repub- 
licans made common cause with the Democrats 
in divesting the Speaker of his traditional power 
to determine the course of legislation by selecting 
from the intractable mass of Bills before the 
House the chosen few to which priority of dis- 
cussion might give an opportunity of passage into 
law. That prerogative was transferred to the 
Committee on Rules, which was better qualified 
than any single official could be to reflect the 
desires of the rank and file of the House. 

How was Mr. Wilson likely to stand with 
Congress ? In both Houses he could command 

6 



82 PRESIDENT WILSON 

a substantial Democratic majority, but the Demo- 
cratic Party was by no means homogeneous, and 
the President's independence of the machine was 
calculated to modify rather than consolidate his 
influence. There was room for some initial doubt, 
therefore, as to his power, as well as his desire, 
for effective personal leadership. As to the latter 
quality, however, conjecture had solid ground to 
build on. No man can go through the ordeal of 
a Presidential election without exposing the whole 
of his past career to the critical scrutiny of the 
world ; and in the four months preceding the 
November polling the electorate had learned 
enough of the President of Princeton and the 
Governor of New Jersey to justify the conviction 
that if the Democratic candidate reached the 
White House he would be content with the role 
neither of constitutional figurehead nor of auto- 
matic registrar of the decisions of Congress. His 
administration promised, in short, to be shaped 
on the Jackson -Lincoln-Roosevelt model, not the 
Buchanan -Taft. 

Opinion both in the legislature and in the 
country was disposed to approve that interpreta- 
tion of the Presidential function. In Congress 
Mr. Wilson was backed by a safe majority, and 
if many Democrats were inclined to be conserva- 
tive, many of the opposition were inclined to be 
radical. The Taft -Roosevelt controversy, indeed, 
had left the Republicans temporarily impotent. 
The antagonism between the advanced and reac- 
tionary wings of the party had crystallized in 
191 I in the formation of the National Progressive 



THE NEW PRESIDENT'S PROSPECTS 83 

Republican League, of which Senator La Follette, 
of Wisconsin, was the leading spirit. The success 
of the Progressives at the polls — Roosevelt totalled 
over seven hundred thousand more votes than Taft 
— indicated a revolt, of which Mr. Wilson was in a 
position to taJke full advantage, against the old 
party alignments and the traditions of the political 
machine. In one of his campaign speeches the 
Democratic candidate had suggested that " the 
burden that is upon the heart of every conscien- 
tious public man is the burden of the thought 
that perhaps he does not sufficiently comprehend 
the national life." ' His election to the Presi- 
dency gave the speaker an opportunity such as 
few of his predecessors enjoyed of proving the 
quality of his own comprehension. 

He had behind him a political following that 
years of unbroken opposition had made oppor- 
tunist and uncertain of its principles and ideals. 
It lay with him to weld it into a self-conscious 
and purposive entity. He had around him and 
before him a commonwealth of citizens in swift 
but blind transition from old political allegiances 
to a new and still undiscerned concentration of 
forces. The impulse to revolt was stronger than 
the capacity to construct. Domination by party 
machines and exploitation at the hands of 
monopolies and trusts had stung a new and 
challenging individualism into activity. Men 
remembered afresh the ideals of those forerunners 
who had " brought forth on this continent a new 
nation, conceived in liberty and dedicated to the 

' The Mew Freedom, chap ■", 



84 PRESIDENT WILSON 

proposition that all men are created equal " ; 
and recognizing how far economic slavery had 
replaced that liberty, and plutocracy and privi- 
lege destroyed that heritage of equality, they were 
ready for any leadership that could carry them 
on to the re -establishment of the old ideals. 

Democracy demanded the right to reassert 
itself. The electorate claimed to choose its repre- 
sentatives, not merely to endorse the decisions of 
the caucus of machine -riggers that controlled the 
destinies of nine candidates out of ten. The 
institution of the direct primary in State and 
national politics, the movement for the indica- 
tion of " Presidential preference " by the indi- 
vidual voter, and the growing approval of the 
principle of the initiative, referendum, and recall • 
in many States, were all evidences of the same 
universal resolve for the recovery of popular 
control over administration. 

But the movement was no more than inchoate. 
The forces opposed to it— financial interests and 
party bosses — were powerful. Strong and decisive 
leadership was needed before all thmgs. In many 
respects Mr. Roosevelt was well qualified for the 
role of leader. He had vision, energy, and a 
wholesome contempt for tradition. But he was 
handicapped by his egoism and by the almost 
insuperable difficulty of converting an established 
party, and a party in power, to a policy of inno- 

' Initiative : Right of a small percentage of the electorate (usually 
lo per cent.) to submit a Bill to the legislature and compel its con- 
sideration. Referendum : Right of the electorate to insist on the 
submission of new legislation to a popular vote. Recall : Right of 
petition for the removal of unsatisfactory public seivants. 



THE NEW PRESIDENT'S PROSPECTS 85 

vation and radical reform. He made the attempt, 
and wrecked his party. For the Democrats the 
task was easier. They were in enjoyment of the 
freedom of opposition. The main permanent 
plank in their platform, tariff reduction, was in 
line with the new movement of thought. They 
were sufficiently disintegrated to welcome the 
emergence of a new constructive programme. 
Standing as a Democrat Mr. Wilson had a unique 
opportunity. If he could rise to the demands of 
a supreme occasion there lay before him, not a 
successful party candidature but true national 
leadership. 

It was mainly in the field of domestic politics 
that leadership was called for. Abroad America 
had few commitments and only one anxiety. Some 
Democrats, it is true, were still exercised over 
the acquisition by a Federal State of a colonial 
empire, but the dominions were of small import- 
ance, and raised no serious administrative prob- 
lems. The Filipinos were being gradually trained 
for self-government and ultimate independence ; 
Porto Rico, another fruit of the Spanish -American 
war, was tranquil ; the Panama differences with 
Colombia were regarded as closed. In another 
category Cuba, her independence restored four 
years earlier after a period of American occupa- 
tion, was maintaining peace and achieving pros- 
perity. San Domingo was under American 
administration, but occupation by a handful of 
marines was sufficient to guarantee the good 
conduct of that inconsiderable republic. In one 
quarter only did trouble threaten. Since the 



86 PRESIDENT WILSON 

• 
resignation of Porfirio Diaz in 1 9 1 1 Mexico had 
been subject to what might be termed indifferently 
a succession of revolutions or a perpetual anarchy. 
American lives had been lost and American 
property destroyed. Madero, the constitutional 
President, had announced that intervention by 
the United States would mean war. Mr. Taft 
had so far successfully averted that catastrophe, 
but with the situation growing steadily worse, he 
left an unenviable legacy to his successor. 

But it was in its effect on domestic legislation 
and administration that the fruits of the election 
of 19 1 2 were looked for first. Mr. Wilson had 
come in on a programme of radical Democracy. 
Almost every speech he delivered in the pre- 
election campaign had pledged him to a reasser- 
tion of the control of the people over legislation 
— expressed directly in the re -establishment of 
the freedom of election — to an attack on monopoly 
and privilege in industry and finance, to an aboli- 
tion of the sectional burdens and sectional endow- 
ments created by a high tariff, and to the 
extension of ameliorative legislation and social 
reforms. 

In entering on that crusade the new President 
had the mass of public sentiment with him. 
The Progressive platform had been even more 
radical than the Democratic. The newly con- 
stituted party had declared that it was " born 
of the nation's awakened sense of injustice," and 
that its supreme purpose was the maintenance 
of the ideal of government of the people by 
the people for the people. It was clear that Mr. 



THE NEW PRESIDENT'S PROSPECTS 87 

Wilson had little to fear from Progressive oppo- 
sition either in Congress or in the country so 
long as he held to the course mapped out in his 
own campaign speeches. 

His own party stood solid at his back. Since 
the Currency Act of 1900 the Democrats had 
abandoned the controversial issue of " free silver," 
and so removed a fertile source of dissension in 
their own ranks. More than that, in their insist- 
ence on the regulation of corporations and on 
industrial and admmistrative reforms in other 
directions they had committed themselves to the 
principle of a much more vigorous assertion of 
authority by the Central Government than the 
academic Democrat of the past could have 
approved. It is true that the Baltimore platform 
of 191 2 had insisted, in its section on State 
Rights, that " Federal remedies for the regula- 
tion of inter-State commerce and for the pre- 
vention of private monopoly shall be added to, 
and not substituted for, State remedies," but that 
rather perfunctory act of homage to party tradi- 
tion did not prevent the Convention from register- 
ing emphatic demands for the vigorous application 
and extension of existing Anti -Trust Laws ; for 
the ratification of the proposed Constitutional 
Amendment providing for a Federal Income Tax ; 
for more drastic regulation of railway, telegraph, 
telephone, and other corporations discharging 
public services ; for Federal development of 
waterways ; and, finally and more comprehen- 
sively, for a return to the unfettered rule of the 
people, whereby alone " can they fthe people] 



88 PRESIDENT WILSON 

protect themselves from the misuse of delegated 
power and the usurpation of governmental instru- 
mentalities by special interests." 

It was clear, therefore, that a President com- 
mitted to effective action along these lines would 
enter on his task free from the fear of opposition 
proceeding from that school of States Rights 
exponents that had in the past dominated the 
Democratic Party. The States Rights doctrine 
had not been jettisoned, but the party, largely 
through the educative influence of its candidate's 
campaign speeches, had by the time Mr. Wilson 
entered on his office in March 19 13 swung itself 
completely into line with the President in its 
acceptance of such Federal action as the national 
situation demanded. President Wilson and his 
party were at one in the resolve to right certain 
wrongs. His vision went beyond theirs, and he 
foresaw that measures would be called for that 
the party as a whole had neither contemplated 
nor discussed. That raised no question of a 
mandate, for a President of the United States is 
at liberty to go where he will if his majofity in 
Congress will follow him. But it meant that the 
success of the Administration must be dependent 
on Mr. Wilson's power to consolidate and rein- 
vigorate his party and use it as a great instrument 
of national reform. It was twenty years since 
it had last been so used by a Democratic Presi- 
dent, and in the interval dissension, disappoint- 
ment, and the absence of responsibility had gone 
far towards rendering it a negligible influence 
in national (though not in State) affairs. 



THE NEW PRESIDENT'S PROSPECTS 89 

Mr. Wilson had not been forced to party 
supremacy by the machine. He had been called 
to leadership by rebels against machine rule^ 
and he took with him into the party councils new 
ideals and an invigorating disregard for obsoles- 
cent political traditions. He had been chosen 
as candidate by delegates who realized what type 
of man they were nominating, and elected Presi- 
dent by voters who realized what type of man 
they were calling to office. It was a new type 
but a welcome type, and by thus expressing their 
confidence in him the rank and file of the Demo- 
cratic Party committed themselves to the loyal 
acceptance of his leadership. It was manifest 
already to the discerning that if he was to lead 
successfully he would necessarily remake the party 
in the process. 



CHAPTER VI 
THE ATTACK ON PRIVILEGE 

The nation has awakened to a sense of neglected ideals and neg- 
lected duties ; to a consciousness that the rank and file of the people 
find life very hard to sustain, that her young men find opportunity 
embarrassed, and that her older men find business difficult to renew 
and maintain because of circumstances of privilege and private 
advantage which have interlaced their subtle threads throughout 
almost every part of the framework of our present law. She has 
awakened to the knowledge that she has lost certain cherished liberties 
and wasted priceless resources which she had solemnly undertaken 
to hold in trust for posterity and for all mankind ; and to the convic- 
tion that she stands confronted with an occasion for constructive 
statesmanship such as has not arisen since the great days in which her 
Government was set up. — Speech of Acceptance, July 1912. 

President Wilson lost no time in putting his 
principles to the proof. He had pledged himself 
to an attack on privilege, and even before his 
actual inauguration preparations for that attack 
were in train. He was installed on March 4th, 
On April 7th Congress, which under normal 
circumstances would not have met till December, 
assembled in special session, summoned by the 
President to consider a new Tariff Revision Bill. 
" Every business question," Mr. Wilson had 
declared a few weeks earlier, " comes back sooner 
or later to the tariff." Accordingly it was to 
tariff revision that his attention was first turned. 
The details and destiny of the Bill prepared 



THE ATTACK ON PRIVILEGE 91 

under his personal direction must be separately- 
examined ; but it is important to recognize that 
it was no isolated measure, but an integral part 
of a comprehensive and deliberately concerted 
programme for the emancipation of the people 
from the fetters imposed by great commercial 
and financial interests. In the execution of that 
programme measures for corporation control and 
currency reform stood out side by side with tariff 
revision among a number of minor Bills directed 
to the same general end. 

There was no question of the urgency of the 
need for reform along all these lines. Republican 
administration, with the high Protection that 
formed a permanent plank in the party platform, 
had been the almost unbroken rule since the 
Civil War, and behind the shelter of a tariff wall 
there had grown up great industrial combinations 
that were rapidly achieving, and in some branches 
of trade had already achieved, a nation-wide 
monopoly. " The protective tariff " — to quote the 
President's own words — " has been taken advant- 
age of by some men to destroy domestic com- 
petition, to combine all existing rivals within 
our free -trade area, and to make it impossible 
for new men to come into the field." The main 
object of a trust tended to be, not to serve the 
public, but to throttle competition and use the 
resulting monopoly to force up prices and inflate 
profits. 

That process involved two main stages, the 
first being the absorption or consolidation of 
existing concerns, the second the resolute exclu- 



92 



PRESIDENT WILSON 



sion of every new competitor attempting to 
measure himself against the trust in the area — 
in some cases co -extensive with the Union itself 
— marked out for its operations. The mania for 
the consolidation of competing cornpanies was 
at its height in the closing years of the nineteenth 
century. " In the single year 1899," writes Pro- 
fessor H. C. Emery, of Yale,' " the nominal 
capital of newly formed combinations reached a 
total of $3,500,000,000,000^ of which, however, 
more than three-quarters represented the capital 
of the reorganized companies. In the following 
year the United States Steel Company was organ- 
ized with a capital of $1,100,000,000, besides a 
bonded indebtedness of $300,000,000. If a [ 
single corporation to control the vast iron and i 
steel business of the country could be successfully 
established, there seemed, indeed, no limit to the } 
process of consolidation." 

These developments had a sinister political side. 
It was essential that the great combinations should 
retain a free hand for their operations by keeping 
Congress, and still more the State legislatures, 
under their control. " Control " is perhaps too 
strong a term to apply to the subterranean 
intrigues at Washington by which powerful trusts 
were able to secure that Bills adverse to their 
interests were never reported out of Committee, 
or that duties by which they were sheltered were 
never lowered a point in a tariff revision. But 
it is not at all too strong to apply to the handling 
of State Legislatures by corporations. For a great 

' Cambridge Modern History^ vol. vii, chap. xxii. 



THE ATTACK ON PRIVILEGE 93 

railway to command the " machine " of the 
dominant party in a State served by its system 
was a commonplace of American politics. The 
Pennsylvania Railroad in New Jersey and the 
Southern Pacific in California were cases in point. 
A corporation knows no politics, in the sense 
that it is indififerent which party it uses to secure 
its ends. If the Republicans are in the ascendant 
it will use the Republicans, if the Democrats the 
Democrats. It will retain counsel whose func- 
tions are exercised more largely in the lobby 
of the Legislature than in the law-courts ; it will 
keep the party campaign chest well stocked ; 
it will maintain permanent and effective under- 
standings with the local bosses ; its advertising 
gives it a hold over the more influential news- 
papers ; and a generous but judicious allocation 
of free passes to editors, politicians, and State 
officials secures a freedom from interference with 
" legitimate and beneficial industry " advan- 
tageous to directors and shareholders if not to 
the general public. Some of these practices are 
now forbidden by State or Federal legislation, 
but it needs little ingenuity to circumvent the 
veto, and where it cannot be circumvented it can 
often be ignored without serious consequences. 
The result of such corporation rule is that the 
railroad can always count on the Legislature to 
refuse authorization for the construction of com- 
petitive lines, and on the executive to turn a 
blind eye to the varying of freight rates from 
the schedules set out in the railroad's charter, to 
the substitution of dangerous level crossings for 



94 PRESIDENT WILSON 

expensive bridges and embankments, or to the 
curtailment or inefficiency of stipulated services. 

Commercial domination of this character has 
for a generation been vitiating the political life 
of the Union. It finds one manifestation in the 
lobbying of the great industrial interests when 
a Tariff Bill is before Congress, and another in 
the extensive interlocking of directorships. What 
that means is seen on a small scale when half 
the members of the board of an inter -State railway 
are at the same time directors of a local lumber 
company or steel foundry seeking special freight 
rates from the railroad. It is seen on a national 
scale when the directorates of the great combines 
— oil or steel or railroads — have sufficient hold 
over the financial houses, as they usually have , 
through the interlocking of the directorships, to if 
close the market to potential trade rivals in need 
of a loan. A Money Trust is as real and as 
serious a peril as an industrial trust. The extent 
of the identity of interests between the financiers 
and the leaders of industry may be gauged by 
the fact that in 19 14, after the report of a Con- 
gressional Committee on money combines, the 
members of the great financial house of Morgan 
resigned thirty directorships of railroad and other 
companies, including the New York Central and 
other Vanderbilt lines, the Western Union Tele- 
graph Company, the United States Steel Corpora- 
tion, the Guaranty and other trust companies, 
and the Westinghouse Electric and Manufacturing 
Company. 

The intimacy of the relationship between in' 



THE ATTAC?: ON PRIVILEGE 95 

dustry and transport was emphasized by Mr. 1 ; 
Wilson himself. " When you reflect," he pointed i I 
out/ " that the twenty-four men who control the j > 
United States Steel Corporation are either presi- U 
dents or vice-presidents or directors in 55 per ' 
cent, of the railways of the United States, you .; : 
know just how close the whole thing is knitted 1 5 
together in our industrial system, and how great ( / 
the temptation is." 

These evils had not grown to maturity un- 
challenged. Almost every session of Congress 
had seen the passage of legislation directed 
towards the restriction of the power of the com- 
bines. Both Mr. Roosevelt and Mr. Taft had 
invoked the existing Anti -Trust Laws Vvith effect, 
and many combines and rings had been broken 
up. But there were grave diilRculties in the 
way. The United States lives under a double 
legal system, State and Federal, and the conflict 
of jurisdiction between the courts gave the com- 
bines, particularly where they were operating in 
several States with different laws, opportunities 
of immunity of which they were sufficiently astute 
to take full advantage. The Democratic platform 
of 19 1 2 was basing its judgment on a sinister 
record of unsuccessful anti -trust litigation when 
it insisted, in language curiously picturesque for 
a political manifesto, that there must be "no 
twilight zone between the nation and the State 
in which exploiting interests can take refuge from 
both." 

It is superfluous to enlarge on Mr. Wilson's 

' The New Freedom, chap. viii. 



96 PRESIDENT WILSON 

antagonism to a system opposed to every article 
in his political philosophy. Declaration of war fi 
on privilege and vested interests, the emancipation I I 
of the consumer oppressed by high tariffs and I I 
uncompetitive prices, and of the small employer 
crushed out of existence by the organized under- 
cutting of the trusts and restriction of access to , 
f credit, was the keynote of almost every speech he 1 
' delivered in the campaign of 191 2. It was 
therefore in full accordance with anticipation that 
the first domestic legislation announced for the 
opening session of the new Congress should be 
directed to the three kindred ends of lowering the 
tariff wall, curbing the power of the trusts, and 
stabilizing finance and opening up new paths of 
access to credit by a broad measure of currency 
reform. 

True to his expressed conviction that the tariff 
lay at the root of every business question, Mr. 
Wilson specified tariff revision as the first task 
of the Congl-ess which met in accordance with 
his special summons in April. That was no 
unfamiliar process. The McKinley Tariff of 
1890, the Wilson Tariff of 1894, the Dingley 
Tariff of 1897, and the Payne-Aldrich Tariff of 
1909, all represented the successive efforts of 
particular interests to shift the burdens of Pro- 
tection from their own shoulders or secure that 
its benefits should accrue to their own advantage. 
Of these the Wilson Bill alone (its author had no 
connection with the subject of this biography) 
was an attempt at a downward revision, and 
even that ended in a compromise that practically 



THE ATTACK ON PRIVILEGE 97 

stultified the measure. The session of 19 13 was 
to see, for the first time since the Civil War, a 
determiaecl and successful endeavour to approxi- 
mate to the traditional Democratic ideal of tariff" 
for revenue only. 

From the outset Mr. Wilson threw into striking 
relief those Presidential prerogatives which con- 
ferred on him the power of initiative. When 
Congress assembled on April 7th the two Houses 
met in joint session to hear the customary Presi- 
dential message delivered by the President in 
person. Not for over a century had such a scene 
been witnessed. Washington had been accus- 
tomed to address Congress in person, and his 
successor, John Adams, followed his example. 
Jefferson had discontinued the practice, preferring 
to transmit a written message, and no subsequent 
President, not even Jackson or Lincoln or Roose- 
velt, had revived it. Mr. Wilson's reversion to 
the earliest precedent was an eloquent indication 
of his views as to the right relationship between 
President and Congress. The Constitution de- 
liberately debarred the executive from close asso- 
ciation with the legislature. Neither the President 
nor his Ministers can sit in either House, and their 
communication with the two Chambers is limited 
to such intercourse as can be squared with the 
clause enacting' that the President '* shall from 
time to time give to the Congress information of 
the state of the Union, and recommend to their 
consideration such measures as he shall judge 
necessary and expedient." ' 

' Constitution of the United States, Article II, section iii. 

7 . ' 



98 PRESIDENT WILSON 

Mr. Wilson determined that at least such asso- 
ciation as was permitted should be as close as pos- 
sible. In his undergraduate article on " Cabinet 
Government in the United States " in the Inter- 
national Review for August 1879, he had dwelt 
on what he called in another place " leaderless 
government," and advocated the establishment of 
Cabinet responsibility to Congress. There is no 
reason to suppose that the lapse of years had 
changed his convictions, and it is clear that as 
President he felt himself fettered by the limita- 
tions imposed by the Constitution. The result 
of those restrictions was to bring the party caucus 
into prominence as the medium through which, if 
at all, the President must initiate and control 
legislation. Since no member of the Cabinet 
could introduce or explain a measure on the 
necessity of which it was agreed, the only method 
was to entrust the Bill to one of the party leaders 
in the Senate or the House. If the majority in 
either Chamber was adverse to the Administration, 
the difficulties of the situation were of necessity 
much accentuated. 

From the first moment of its career to the last 
Mr. Wilson devoted himself by every means 
proper to his "''office to promoting the passage of 
the Tariff Bill. His initial message to Congress 
on its assembly in April confined itself to that 
question alone. The revision, in the President's 
words, was designed to forestall " a final hard 
crystallization of monopoly and a complete loss of 
the influences that quicken enterprise and keep 
independent energy alive." To secure that end 



THE ATTACK ON PRIVILEGE 99 

" we must abolish everything that bears even 
the semblance of privilege or of any kind of 
artificial advantage, and put our business men 
and producers under the stimulation of a con- 
stant necessity to be efficient, economical, and 
enterprising masters of competitive supremacy, 
better workers and merchants than any in the 
world." 

The President could rely on a solid party 
majority, but even that did not mean plain sailing 
for his Bill. Democratic Congressmen were no 
more immune than Republican from the influences 
threatened interests could bring to bear. There 
were local considerations to weigh as well as 
financial. It was not an easy matter for the 
representative of a steel -producing or sheep- 
raising district to bring an entirely unbiassed 
mind to the discussion of the metal and wool 
schedules in the new Bill. Conscious of that, the 
President felt it the more necessary to exercise 
his personal influence at every point where his 
action or suggestion would have effect. The 
Bill was introduced into the House by Mr. Oscar 
Underwood, a Congressman (and subsequently 
Senator) from Alabama. The Committee on 
Ways and Means had begun to get it into shape 
even before the President had actually taken office, 
and he himself took an active part in their work. 

The details of the measure are less important 
than its general trend, and it is sufficient to 
mention the main changes it effected. Broadly 
speaking, its policy was to tax luxuries and free 
necessities. Many food commodities, such as 



lOO PRESIDENT WILSON 

wheat, flour, fish, potatoes, together with wool, 
coal, and leather, went on to the free list. Duties 
on clothing and textiles were reduced, and sugar 
was to be free after three years. At the same 
time the new Constitutional Amendment,' author- 
izing the levying of a Federal Income -Tax, was 
invoked for the first time, and a graduated tax, 
beginning with i per cent, on incomes over 
$4,000, was imposed. The yield of the reduced 
tariff and the income-tax was below expecta- 
tions, and new taxation had to be levied in 19 14. 
Thanks largely to the President's assumption of 
leadership in the tariff revision movement, the 
Bill had an easier passage than might have been 
predicted for so contentious a measure. It went 
through the House in a month, but at once ran 
foul of the usual obstacles in the Senate. The 
familiar lobbying was soon in full swing, and 
amendment after amendment in endless succes- 
sion was moved. Mr. Wilson let the process 
go unhindered for a time, and then intervened 
characteristically and with immediate effect. The 
Bill was a people's Bill, and the people's backing 
must be invoked to secure its passage. The 
President made a public statement on the measure. 
Declaring that he was ready to accept no com- 
promise, he called the attention of the public to 
" the extraordinary exertions being made by the 
lobby in Washington to gain recognition for 
certain alterations of the Tariff Bill." " Washing- 
ton," he asserted, " has seldom seen so numerous, 
so industrious, or so insidious a lobby. The news- 

' Amendment XVI, declared in force February 1913. 



THE ATTACK ON PRIVILEGE loi 

papers are being filled with paid advertisements 
calculated to mislead, not only the judgment of 
the public men but also the public opinion of 
the country itself. There is every evidence that 
money without limit is being spent to maintain 
this lobby, and to create the appearance of a 
pressure of public opinion antagonistic to some 
of the chief items of the Tariff Bill." The appeal 
to the ultimate authority had its effect. The 
Senate passed the Bill at the end of September 
and President Wilson signed it, substantially in 
the form in which it was first introduced, on 
October 3rd. The first of his three measures of 
reform was safe in harbour. 

In 19 1 6 the Underwood Tariff Act was supple- 
mented by a useful measure constituting a stand- 
ing Tariff Commission. The President, who had 
not in the first instance favoured the appointment 
of such a Commission, came to recognize the 
\'alue of the work it might perform, and in January 
19 1 6, in a letter to the Chairman of the Ways 
and Means Committee of the House, he outlined 
the proper functions of the proposed Board whose 
creation he advocated. 

" It should," he wrote, '* investigate the ad- 
ministrative and fiscal effects of the customs laws 
now in force or hereafter enacted ; the relations 
between the rates of duty on raw materials and 
those on finished or half-finished products ; the 
effects of ad valorem and specific duties, and 
the classifications of the articles of the several 
schedules ; the provisions of law and the rates 
and regulations of the Treasury Department re- 



I02 PRESIDENT WILSON 

garding entry, appraisement, invoices, and collec- 
tion ; and in general the working of the customs 
tariff laws in economic effect and administrative 
method." 

A Bill framed on these lines wias in due course 
passed into law, and at the end of 1 9 1 6 the 
President offered the chairmanship of the newly 
constituted Commission to Professor Taussig, the 
distinguished Harvard economist, an appointment 
that made an excellent impression. 

The legislation to which the remainder of the 
special session of 1913 was devoted, the passage 
of a Currency Bill, was in one aspect an attack 
on privilege, in that it effectively mitigated the 
danger of the concentration of credit in the hands 
of a Money Trust. But its purpose was much 
broader than that. For fifty years the banking 
and currency system of the United States had been 
unequal to its financial needs. It dated back to 
the Civil War, when, in order to secure a market 
for Government bonds. Chase, the Secretary of the 
Treasury, practically vetoed the issue of notes by 
all banks failing" to invest a third of their capital 
in such bonds. Banks complying with this con- 
dition could issue notes up to 90 per cent, of 
the face value of the bonds. The effect of that 
restriction was to stereotype a note issue which 
was not merely incapable of expanding to meet 
commercial needs, but in recent years had been 
steadily contracting ; for as the Government 
bonds increased in price (and notes could only 
be issued against the face value, not the current 
value, of the bonds) the banks preferred to sur- 



THE ATTACK ON PRIVILEGE 103 

render their right of issue, realize an their bonds, 
and employ their capital more profitably else- 
where. The artificial rigidity of the currency 
was a serious drag on commercial and industrial 
enterprise, and repeated attempts had been made 
to substitute a more efficient system. None had 
proved successful, and it was left to Mr. Wilson 
to introduce a comprehensive measure of reform 
that revolutionized the whole banking system of 
the United States. 

The President's success in carrying the Currency 
Bill through Congress is the more striking in that, 
as he frankly admitted, he possessed no expert 
knowledge of finance. In his speech of accept- 
ance to the delegates of the Democratic Conven- 
tion that nominated him for the Presidency he 
had declined to commit himself to dogmatic pro- 
posals, but laid it down that at least the system 
established should be designed to meet the 
requirements of merchants and farmers as well 
as bankers, and to frustrate that " concentration 
of the control of credit which may at any time 
become infinitely dangerous to free enterprises." 

But if Mr. Wilson had not the necessary quali- 
fications for drafting a programme of currency 
reform, he knew where to find the men who had. 
In his faculty for drawing on the knowledge and 
experience of authorities of recoghized eminence 
in fields where his own knowledge is limited 
the President has a good deal in common with 
Mr. Lloyd George. Each of them is always ready 
to call in the expert. Neither is prepared to be ^ 
subservient to him. And each has a ?ift for 



I04 PRESIDENT WILSON 

discussion and accommodation. In the case of 
the Currency Bill Mr. Wilson got the party leaders 
in the House early to work. As with the Tariff 
Bill, they were considering the form of the 
measure before the President was actually in- 
augurated. He himself took an active part in 
their conferences, and proposed to use the same 
personal influence in support of the Bill as 
he had exercised for the promotion of tariff 
revision. 

The Tariff Bill had been transmitted from the 
House to the Senate early in May. On June 23rd 
the President, again addressing Congress in 
person, started the Currency Bill on its way. His 
message was, as always, terse and vigorous. He 
emphasized the relation of the second gfeat 
measure of the session to the first. The Tariff 
Bill was designed to unfetter business, the Cur- 
rency Bill to open up new paths of enterprise and 
offer practical incentives to industrial expansion. 
" It is absolutely imperative," he declared, " that 
we should give the business men of this country 
a banking and currency system by means of which 
they can make use of the freedom of enterprise 
and of individual initiative which we are about 
to bestow upon them." The character of the 
new proposals was broadly indicated by the asser- 
tion that " we must have a currency not rigid 
as now, but readily, elastically responsive to sound 
credit, the expanding and contractinjg credits of 
everyday transactions, the normal ebb and flow 
of personal and corporate dealings. Our bank- 
ing laws must mobihze reserves, must not permit 



THE ATTACK ON PRIVILEGE 105 

the concentration anywhere in a few hands of the 
monetary resources of the country, or their use 
for speculative purposes in such volume as to 
hinder or impede or stand in the way of other 
more legitimate, more fruitful uses." 

The Bill as finally passed by Congress differed 
in some details, none of them fundamental, from 
the form in which it was originally introduced by 
Mr. Carter Glass, of Virginia, in the House at 
the end of June. The system it instituted was 
singularly simple and symmetrical, its central 
purpose being to stimulate the fluidity of credit 
on a national scale. To that end every national 
bank (i.e. a bank incorporated under Federal 
as opposed to State laws) must, and every State 
bank might, link itself to a new Federal Reserve 
Bank, of which twelve were to be established in 
twelve defined areas into which the Union was for 
this purpose divided. ' Every bank must become 
a stockholder in the Federal Reserve Bank of its 
district up to 6 per cent, of its paid-up capital, 
and deposit its reserves with the Federal Bank, 
which would always be under obligation to re- 
discount for a local bank, making payment in 
Federal Reserve notes. These, in their turn, 
were to be convertible into gold at any of the 
twelve regional Reserve Banks or at the United 
States Treasury. 

At the centre, and in control of the whole 

' The twelve banks are situated at Boston, New York, Philadelphia, 
Cleveland (Ohio), Richmond (\'irginia), Atlanta (Georgia), Chicago, 
St. Louis, Minneapolis (Minnesota), Kansas City, Dallas (Texas), and 
San Francisco. 



io6 PRESIDENT WILSON 

system, a Federal Reserve Board was to be estab- 
lished at Washington, directed by the Secretary 
of the Treasury and the Comptroller of the Cur- 
rency, together with five members nominated by 
the President and approved by the Senate. Each 
regional Reserve Bank is controlled by nine 
directors, six chosen by its member banks and 
three by the Federal Reserve Board at Washing- 
ton. The twelve regional banks are purely 
bankers* banks, doing no business direct with 
the public. Their main function is issuing notes 
against commercial paper for the benefit of their 
member banks, and they must maintain a 
minimum gold reserve of 40 per cent, against 
such issues. In addition they are expected to act 
as clearing-houses for their member banks. 

The effect of the system is to prevent the accu- 
mulation of money power at any single centre or 
in the hands of any group of financiers ; and the 
network of conduit -pipes linking up every local 
bank with a regional Federal Reserve Bank, and 
through it with the Federal Reserve Board at 
Washington, gives every solvent banking house 
an absolute guarantee against stoppage of pay- 
ment through inability to liquidate its assets ; for 
a panic resulting" in a run so severe as to paralyze 
even the Reserve Board at the centre is hardly to 
be imagined. On the power conferred on the 
Reserve Board to do business in foreign markets 
it is not possible to dwell here, though it may 
in the course of tim.e make a new place for 
America in the field of international finance. It 
was significant that certain national banks imme- 



THE ATTACK ON PRIVILEGE 107 

diately took advantage of the Act by opening 
branches at Buenos Aires and other South 
American centres. 

No measure so revolutionary could look for 
an easy passage through Congress. It was 
opposed from the first by the bankers, who wanted 
a new Central Bank under their own control, and 
by conservatives like Senator Root and Senator 
Lodge, who feared an inflation of the currency, 
with resultant high prices. The Senate was almost 
evenly divided for and against the measure, but 
the President refused to countenance concession 
on any point of principle, and in the end the Bill, 
modified in certain unimportant particulars by 
agreement between the two Houses, was sent 
forward for his signature, which was affixed on 
December 23, 191 3. The Federal Reserve Board, 
with its twelve regional banks, came into being 
in the following year. It has as yet undergone 
no very exacting test, but the soundness of the 
scheme has been definitely vindicated. A typical 
verdict was that of Dr. C. W. Eliot, President 
Emeritus of Harvard, who wrote of it that " no 
American administration has ever before accom- 
plished so great a contribution to the stability 
and efficiency of American credit and financial 
enterprise. Business men of all sorts — financial, 
manufacturing, and commercial — recognize the 
high value of this remarkable achievement." ' 
The prospect of facing the problems raised by 
the European War with no better system of cur- 
rency and reserve than the outworn legacy of 

' Atlantic Monthly, October 191 5. 



io8 PRESIDENT WILSON 

Civil War days would have been impossible to 
contemplate. 

With the Currency Act is to be associated a 
measure on which Mr. Wilson had laid much stress 
in his pre-election speeches, the Rural Credits 
Act, though the measure embodying his views 
did not actually become law till more than two 
years later. The purpose of the Bill, first men- 
tioned in the President's message as part of the 
programme of 191 4, was to facilitate advances 
to farmers. It was finally passed in July 191 6.' 

The anti -trust legislation on which Mr. Wilson 
had laid constant stress in his campaign speeches 
was commended to Congress in the Presidential 
message of January 20, 1914- To estimate its 
importance the nature of the restrictions already 
in force needs to be appreciated. The instrument 
on which the Administration relied in its perpetual 
conflict with the trusts was the Sherman Act of 
1890. The operative passage of that measure 
consists of the enactment that " every contract, 
combination in the form of trust or otherwise, or 
conspiracy, in restraint of trade or commerce 
among the several States, or with foreign nations, 
is hereby declared to be illegal." Important as 
the Sherman Act was, it had many defects, chief 
of them the vagueness of its language. The 
question of whether a particular corporation repre- 
sented " a combination in restraint of trade " 
opened the door to endless forensic argument and 
conflicting legal decisions, while the Act was for 
a time emasculated through the verdict of the 

' See p. 218. 



THE ATTACK ON PRIVILEGE 109 

Supreme Court in 1895 ' that it applied only to 
commercial and not to manufacturing concerns. 
Later decisions modified the position by pro- 
nouncing favourably on the application of the 
Act to railway combinations, to " holding com- 
panies " (i.e. the merging of two or more com- 
petitive concerns in a corporation which acquires 
their stock and controls them), and to corners in 
staple products. It was also laid down that a 
labour boycott w!as a restraint of trade, and there- 
fore illegal under the Act. 

The real defect of the Sherman Act,- however, 
was that it provided no sound basis for dis- 
crimination between legitimate and illegitimate 
competition. "Big Business," as both Mr. 
Roosevelt and Mr. Wilson recognized, is not 
necessarily an evil. It may result in large-scale 
production, enabling the manufacturer to supply 
the consumer with a better article at a lower 
price. The judges themselves appreciated that, 
and in the famous Standard Oil case in 1 9 1 i the 
Supreme Court laid it down that in each case 
the Court must decide "in the light of reason " 
whether the combination under discussion was or 
was not a deliberate attempt to restrain trade and 
competition. That was a common -sense ruling, 
but it threw a heavy responsibility on the Courts, 
and tended to divert to the judiciary a good deal 
of hostility that should have been directed against 
the legislature. 

The great merit of Mr. Wilson's proposals for 
the reinforcement of the Sherman Act was his 

' United States v. Knight Sugar Refining Company. 



no PRESIDENT WILSON 

recognition of the fact that great combinations 
were not of necessity against the public interest, 
and his resolve to proceed by administrative as 
well as legislative methods. Mr. Roosevelt, who 
had worked the Sherman Act hard during" his 
terms of office, had taken the view that " the 
true way of dealing with monopoly is to prevent 
it by administrative action before it grows so 
powerful that even when courts condemn it they 
shrink from destroying it." ' Mr. Wilson was 
of the same opinion, and the central feature of 
the anti -trust legislation initiated by him in 191 4 
was the institution of a Federal Trade Commission, 
such as Mr. Roosevelt had advocated but been 
unable to create. The essential reform, the Presi- 
dent had repeatedly insisted,^ was to " let in the 
light " on the constitution and operations of great 
corporations, and the Federal Trade Commission 
was invested with powers of investigation and 
mandate that went far towards dispelling the 
secrecy that proved so effective a protection to 
numbers of combinations palpably detrimental to 
the public interest. 

The Presidential message of January 1914 had 



' Autobiography, chap. xii. 

^ E.g. " The processes of capital must be as open as the processes of 
pohtics. Those who make use of the great modern accumulations ot 
wealth, gathered together by the dragnet process of the sale of stocks 
and bonds, must be treated as under a public obligation ; they must 
be made responsible for their business methods to the great communi- 
ties, which are, in fact, their working partners, so that the hand which 
makes correction shall easily reach them, and a new principle of 
responsibility be felt throughout their structure and operation " {The 
New Freedom, chap. vi). 



THE ATTACK ON PRIVILEGE in 

been awaited with- anxiety by the great commer- 
cial interests, but their apprehensions were largely 
allayed by its conciliatory tone. Mr. Wilson dis- 
claimed all intention of " unsettling business or 
breaking its established course athwart," and let 
it be understood that there was to be no blind 
and undiscriminating attack on all forms of big 
business, good and bad. The specific proposals 
he outlined provided for — 

1 . The prohibition of " interlocking director- 
ates." I 

2. An increase of the power of the Inter-State 
Commerce Commission over new railway issues. 

3. A clearer definition of the term " in restraint 
of trade and commerce." 

4. The creation of a Federal Trade Commis- 
sion. . j 

5. The prohibition of "holding companies." \' 

6. A simplification of legal processes in the 
interests of individuals suing' a corporation on 
facts proved in a Government suit. 

This programme was before Congress all the 
summer. The Bills encountered much opposition 
and underwent considerable emendation in the 
Senate, but before the session closed in October 
the President had secured the essence of his 
demands. He set his signature to two important 
measures, one the Federal Trade Commission Act, 
the other the Clayton Act, the main provisions 
of which ( i) strengthened the hands of an injured 
party under the existing anti -trust laws ; (2) 
defined certain abuses, discriminations, and re- 

' See p. 94, supra. 



112 PRESIDENT WILSON 

straints of trade, and empowered the Trade Com- 
mission to deal with them ; and (3) legalized 
the boycott in labour disputes. There is a close 
analogy between this last provision and the right 
of combination guaranteed to Labour in Great 
Britain under the Trade Disputes Act of 1906. 
The functions of the Federal Trade Commission 
have been outlined above.' The central feature 
of the law instituting it is the clause declaring 
that " unfair methods of competition in commerce 
are hereby declared unlawful." The Commission 
was furnished with extensive pov/ers of investi- 
gation into the affairs of corporations, with 
authority to issue orders, against Which appeals 
lie to the Federal Courts. Its creation meant a 
large and beneficial extension of administrative 
control over monopolies, corners, rings, and com- 
binations. The President could with justice claim 
that closed doors had been thrown open, dark 
places explored, and the wholesome light of pub- 
licity turned on the conduct of enterprises that 
formed in a fundamental sense a subject of public 
concern. 

' P. IIO> 



CHAPTER VII 
THE MEXICAN PROBLEM 

What is it our duty to do ? Clearly everything that we do must 
be rooted in patience and done with calm and disinterested delibera 
tion. Impatience on our part would be childish, and would be 
fraught with every risk of wrong and folly. We can aflbrd to * 
exercise the self-restraint of a really great nation which realizes its ' 
own strength and scorns to misuse it. It was our duty to offer our 
active assistance. It is now our duty to show what true neutrality 
will do to enable the people of Mexico to set their affairs in order 
again and wait for a further opportunity to offer our friendly counsels. 
The door is not closed against the resumption, either upon the 
initiative of Mexico or upon our own, of the effort to bring order out 
of the confusion by friendly co-operative action, should fortunate 
occasion offer. — Address to Congress, August 19 13. 

No feature of President Wilson's administration, 
with the exception of his relation to the European 
conflict, has exposed him to more unsparing 
criticism than his policy with regard to Mexico. 
No President, it is just to add, could have had 
any hope of cutting such a course through the 
multitudinous complexities of the problem as 
would satisfy every conflicting section of his 
critics. 

Mexico had for something like ninety years 
been a source of perpetual anxiety to the Govern- 
ment of the United States. The State had finally 
shaken off Spanish rule and constituted itself a 
federal republic in the year 1S24. Within the 

8 "3 



114 PRESIDENT WILSON 

next fifty years it could boast of fifty -two presi- 
dents or dictators, one emperor, and one regent, 
most of whom met violent deaths at the hands of 
their successors. In 1845 the incorporation of 
the once Mexican province of Texas into the 
Union of the United States led to the war of 
1845-8, aspects of which are familiar to every 
one who has read the " Biglow Papers." As a 
result of Zachary Taylor's and Winfield Scott's 
campaigns in those years Mexico lost to the United 
States (in addition to Texas) the vast territories 
to. the west of the Rockies now represented by 
the States of California, Utah, Nevada, Arizona, 
and New Mexico. 

Though there was never serious talk, except 
among a limited section in the South, of further 
encroachment on Mexican territory, Mexico re- 
mained permanently distrustful of her northern 
neighbour. Her suspicions were, however, 
partially dispelled by the attitude of the 
United States after the Civil War, when the 
Washington Government insisted on the termina- 
tion of the French occupation of Mexico (in 
accordance with the principles of the Monroe 
Doctrine), but took no step towards instituting 
an American suzerainty. The fortunes of the 
republic steadily improved after the advent to 
power in 1876 of General Porfirio Diaz, who, 
being re-elected for term after term, established 
what was not far removed from a dictatorship, 
on the whole salutary in its effects, lasting down 
to his abdication in May 1 9 1 1 . 

The withdrawal of Diaz's strong hand was the 



THE MEXICAN PROBLEM 115 

signal for the outbreak of anarchical movements, 
which are still (January 1917) disastrously active. 
His own resignation was due to the rebellion of 
a faction, headed by Francisco Madero, hostile 
to the President's prolonged usurpation of power. 
Five months after Diaz's retirement to Europe 
— in October 191 1 — Madero was elected constitu- 
tional President of the Mexican Republic. Revolts 
against his rule followed immediately ; at least 
one of them, led by General Zapata, being 
generally supposed to depend on American 
interests (private interests, it heed hardly be 
added) for financial support. Madero, however, 
could count on the loyalty of the bulk of the 
Federal Army, and he maintained for a time a 
precarious tenure of power. 

The interest of the United States in afl'airs in 
Mexico was direct and intimate. Apart from the 
danger of incursions across the Texas frontier, 
which was at this time slight, there were heavy 
investments both of European and American 
capital in Mexican coalfields and oil wells, and 
large foreign holdings of railway shares and 
Government bonds. The United States was 
trustee for the property both of her own 
and of foreign investors, for she could only dis- 
countenance European intervention, as a breach 
of the Monroe Doctrine, if she was prepared to 
give the same guarantee for the protection of 
British or French or German interests in Mexico 
as the respective Governments would have secured 
by diplomatic or military action. President 
Roosevelt had fully recognized that principle when 



ii6 PRESIDENT WILSON 

he went debt-collecting on behalf of foreign 
investors in San Domingo, and none of his 
successors could logically repudiate it. 

None the less President Taft, who was in office 
during the earlier phases of the Mexican con- 
flict, exerted every possible effort to avoid 
American intervention. He knew how much 
easier it would be to get into a war with Mexico, 
or with a Mexican faction, than to get out again, 
and there were cogent reasons against the assump- 
tion by the United States of anything like per- 
manent responsibility for the internal government 
of the Latin republic. An extension of American 
influence south of the Rio Grande would have 
been received with suspicion and resentment in 
Mexico itself and in most of the South American 
States, and with undisguised disapproval in some 
European capitals. Fortunately for Mr. Taft, the 
problem had not in his time entered its acute 
phase. Madero was still in power as a consti- 
tutionally elected President, and though over a 
large part of the country his authority was openly 
flouted, America was able to avoid active inter- 
vention. In March 191 2 the President had for- 
bidden the exportation of arms to Mexico, but 
he felt able to return a reassuring answer to 
Madero's intimation that the first crossing of the 
border by an American trooper would mean war. 
And though American lives, as well as American 
property, were lost in Mexico in the course of 
the summer. President Taft maintained his atti- 
tude of neutrality without arousing serious 
criticism at home. 



THE MEXICAN PROBLEM 117 

But the Republican administration left a dis- 
quieting legacy to its successor ; and the respon- 
sibility resting on Mr. Wilson when he assumed 
office, in March 19 13, was greatly augmented 
by the fact that barely a fortnight earlier Presi- 
dent Madero had been deposed and murdered, 
in favour of a rebel leader named Victoriano 
Huerta, who immediately proclaimed himself 
President . 

From this point onward conflicting interpreta- 
tions and estimates have been put on every article 
in the President's Mexican policy by rival schools 
of opinion in America. Each can make a respect- 
able case for its contentions. But if that policy 
is to be understood at all, it is necessary to take 
into account at the outset certain of the factors 
by which the President's action was determined. 
In the first place, he is temperamentally a pacifist, 
standing somewhere— precisely where is imma- 
terial — between the idealism of Mr. Bryan and 
the minatory self-restraint of Mr. Roosevelt. In 
the second, he was firmly resolved that no recog- 
nition should be extended to Huerta. In his eyes 
the soi-disant President was an assassin and a 
usurper. On Huerta's responsibility for the 
murder of Madero there was some conflict of 
opinion and no conclusive evidence, but the Presi- 
dent must be assumed to have been in possession 
of information sufficiently definite to justify his 
decision. 

But it is clear that the dominant idea in Mr. 
Wilson's mind from the first was the conviction 
that the remotest suspicion of American aggres- 



ii8 PRESIDENT WILSON 

sion in Mexico must be discouraged if the 
republics of Central and Southern America were 
to be satisfied as to the disinterestedness of any 
movement initiated by Washington for a closer 
association between them and the United States. 
The range of the President's views on a Pan- 
American alliance is more fully indicated in 
another chapter.' The ultimate judgment on 
them may be favourable or adverse, but it will at 
least be conceded that they fall under the head 
of true statesmanship, not of personal idiosyn- 
crasy or visionary idealism. Whether it was 
necessary or wise to adjust Mexican policy to 
the requirements of the larger Pan-American 
purpose is a debatable cjuestion. But to realize 
that such an adjustment was in fact being 
attempted is to start with an adequate compre- 
hension of the President's governing motive. 

Whatever the principles on which he based 
his action, an administrator in President Wilson's 
position was almost inevitably fated to hold to 
them too rigidly or deviate from them too lightly. 
The task of picking the one path of perfect 
wisdom almiong the treacherous and shifting quick- 
sands of Mexican rivalry and intrigue was beyond 
normal human capacity. It will be the business 
of the dispassionate historian of a later day to 
determine whether Mr. Wilson's mistakes were 
less or greater than any statesman of ability 
might be pardoned for committing in a like 
situation. The Mexican problem is still in process 
of solution, and no final judgment can as yet be 

^ r. 138, seq. 



THE MEXICAN PROBLEM 119 

passed on the quality or the effect of American 
diplomacy in that sphere. 

If Mr. Wilson was determined to discoun- 
tenance Huerta, he had no lack of alternative 
choices at his command . Felix Diaz, nephew 
of the former President, and Generals Carranza, 
Zapata, and Villa, were all in the field, any one of 
them ready to usurp the supreme power if fortune 
should sufficiently establish his position. In point 
of fact, however, the President had no desire to 
support a particular Mexican claimant as such. 
He was resolved that Huerta must go, but apart 
from that stipulation his hope was that the 
Mexican people would settle their own affairs by 
holding a constitutional election and choosing a 
President who would command general support. 
Meanwhile a waiting policy was to be observed, 
Huerta being refused American arms and 
American loans. This policy met, at any rate at 
first, with general approval in the United States, 
though American citizens in Mexico pressed for 
Huerta's recognition on the ground that he alone 
was capable of reducing the country to order. 
These representations would have been better 
received if the average American had not shared 
the President's disinclination to interfere in the 
internal affairs of another sovereign State in the 
interests of exploiters and concessionaires. It has 
largely escaped notice in that connection that 
President Wilson has tacitly enunciated the 
doctrine that nationals of one State operating 
in another State for their own benefit do so at 
their own risk — a striking departure from estab- 



I20 PRESIDENT WILSON 

lished international practice.' Some of the Presi- 
dent's " preparedness " speeches, however, were 
by no means consistent with that principle. 

It is impossible to trace in detail the bewilder- 
ing changes that followed the murder of Madero 
in February 191 3. The three outstanding events 
were the occupation of Vera Cruz by America 
in April 1914, the resignation and abdication 
of Huerta in July of the same year, and the formal 
recognition of Carranza at the end of 191 5. Mr. 
Wilson, having resolved under no circumstances 
to recognize Huerta, settled down, from the 
moment of taking office, to his policy of watchful 
waiting — hoping, while taking no active steps to 
give effect to the hope, for the defeat of the self- 
appointed President by the forces of Carranza 
and Villa, who claimed to represent constitutional 
government in Mexico. Events, however, gave 
no sign of moving in that direction, and the 
situation was rendered the more embarrassing by 
the studied correctness of Huerta's diplomatic 
attitude and the truculence of Carranza. 

In an address to Congress at the end of August 
Mr. Wilson stood by his policy, but admitted that 

' " To President Wilson's administration the country owes its thorough 
committal to two policies which nearly concern its righteousness and 
its dignity. The first of these policies is — no war with Mexico. The 
second is — no intervention by force of arms to protect on foreign soil 
American commercial and manufacturing adventurers who of their 
own free will have invested their money or risked their lives in 
foreign parts under alien jurisdiction. . . . America has now turned 
her back on the familiar policy of Rome and Great Britain of protect- 
ing or avenging their wandering citizens by force of arms, and has 
set up quite a different policy of her own " (Dr. C. W. Eliot, Atlantic 
Monthly, October 1916). 



THE MEXICAN PROBLEM 121 

so far it had had no satisfactory resuhs. He 
had sent a personal intermediary, ex -Governor 
Lind, of Minnesota, to urge Huerta to abandon 
his usurped position and arrange for the holding 
of a constitutional election at which he himself 
would not be a candidate. The proposal was 
declined. The President reaffirmed the neutrality 
of the United States, spoke hopefully of the ulti- 
mate effect of moral force, and declared an 
embargo on the export of arms from Union terri- 
tory to Mexico. The embargo was destined to 
be raised and reimposed for different reasons 
several times in the next two years. 

Huerta himself forced the next declaration by 
the President, his seizure of over a hundred 
deputies and the proclamation of an election to 
be held practically under duress evoking an 
announcement that no election held under such 
conditions could be recognized by Washington as 
valid. Anarchy continued, the undisciplined 
forces of Huerta, Carranza, Villa, and Zapata 
holding different parts of the country in sub- 
jection. In February 1914 the arms embargo 
was withdrawn, since it seemed to be injuring the 
Carranzists rather than Huerta. In April an un- 
expected incident precipitated a crisis. Early in 
that month a party of United States sailors who 
had landed at Tampico, the port of the Mexican 
oilfields, to obtain petrol, were put under arrest 
by a Huertist colonel. They were subsequently 
released with an apology, but Huerta, faced with 
a demand that the Mexican authorities should 
salute the American flag as an apology, pre- 



122 PRESIDENT WILSON 

varicated and offered an unacceptable compro- 
mise. An ultimatum was dispatched by Mr. 
Bryan, as Secretary of State, and the President 
appealed to Congress to invest him with power 
to take such armed action as the situation might 
demand. 

The House at once complied, but before the 
Senate could pass the necessary resolution orders 
were sent to the Admiral in command of the 
squadron off Mexico to seize the custom-house 
at Vera Cruz. Vigorous protests against the 
President's cavalier treatment of the Senate were 
entered by Senator Root, Senator Lodge, and 
others, but the explanation that immediate action 
was necessary in order to prevent the expected 
landing of a cargo of arms for Huerta was 
generally accepted as satisfactory. Incidentally a 
nice constitutional point had been raised, for while 
the President of the United States has unlimited 
authority over the armed forces of the Union, it 
is not he but Congress that declares war. If 
the landing at Vera Cruz was an act of war, 
the President had gone beyond his powers. 
Americans, however, were too anxious to know 
whether they were committed to a Mexican war 
to split hairs over the Constitution, and Mr. 
Wilson could count on the full support of the 
nation in any action he might find it necessary 
to take. 

So far, however, all that was involved was a 
local and limited measure of intervention — inter- 
vention both uncontemplated and undesired by 
the interveners . To make matters worse, the Vera 



THE MEXICAN PROBLEM 123 

Cruz landing was resented by Carranza, equally 
with Huerta, as an invasion of the sovereign 
rights of Mexico. But the possible dangers of 
the situation were averted, and though the 
American landing-party came in for some sharp 
fighting^ though not merely the custom-house but 
the whole port was seized, and though the 
occupation was maintained for nearly eight 
months, the feared breach between the United 
States and Mexico as a whole did not take place. 
President Wilson attended the funeral of seven- 
teen American sailors killed at Vera Cruz, and 
declared that they had died in " a war of 
service." ' 

Meanwhile events had taken a new turn with 
the proposal of the so-called A. B. C. Powers, 
Argentina, Brazil, and Chile, to mediate in the 
Mexican quarrel . This association of the South 
American Powers with the United States opened 
up large questions, on which something more 
must be said in another chapter. ^ Their action 
was warmly welcomed by Mr. Wilson, and a 

" " We have gone down to Mexico to serve mankind if we can find 
a way. We do not want to fight the Mexicans ; we want to serve 
them if we can. A war of aggression is not a war in which it is 
a proud thing to die, Ixit a war of service is one in which it is a 
grand thing to die. 

" I never was under fire, but I fancy there are some things just 
as hard to do as to go under fire. I fancy it is just as hard to do 
your duty when men are sneering at you as when they are shooting at 
you. When they shoot at you they can only take your natural life. 
When they sneer at you they can wound your heart. The cheers 
of the moment are not what a man ought to think about, but the 
verdict of his conscience and the conscience of mankind." {Speech at 
funeral at Brooklyn Navy Yard. ) 

=" P. 138, infra. 



124 PRESIDENT WILSON 

Mediation Conference, attended by rtpresentatives 
of all four Powers, met on Canadian soil at 
Niagara Falls in May 19 14. Huertist delegates 
were present. Carranza, after temporizing and 
refusing, finally sent representatives, who were, 
however, excluded from the Conference because 
the leader for whom they professed to speak 
declined to assent to an armistice while 
deliberations were in progress. 

The Niagara Falls Conference had no direct 
result, and fierce fighting continued in Mexico. 
The complications of the situation were increased 
by a quarrel between Carranza and Villa ; but in 
the meantime Ilucrta's position was becoming 
more and more untenable, and his determination 
to resign was rumoured. In the middle of July 
he left Mexico City, and within a week he had 
set sail for Europe, having first nominated his 
Foreign Secretary, Francisco Carbajal, as Pro- 
visional President. 

Huerta's elimination closed one chapter in the 
diplomatic contest with Mexico. Mr. Wilson had 
never consented to recognize him, though most 
of the European Powers had done so within a 
month of his usurpation, taking the view that he 
was at least the de faCto ruler of Mexico and 
that to sustain his autliority was the most effec- 
tive way to secure the pacification of the country 
and the protection of foreign interests. The 
President was justified in claiming that his policy 
of watchful abstention had had its reward ; but 
the cpiestion remained whether the result achieved 
had involved an undue sacrifice of American in- 



THE MEXICAN PROBLEM 125 

terests, and whether a settlement in Mexico would 
be any more practicable after Huerta's departure 
than it was before. To that both affirmative and 
negative answers were confidently returned by 
differing schools of political opinion in the United 
States. 

It could not be claimed that the position 
showed any immediate improvement. The 
Huertist nominee, Sefior Carbajal, held office 
for just a month, and then began a further pro- 
longed period of anarchy, in which the three 
predominant figures were Carranza, Villa, and 
Zapata. Each of them held a portion of the 
country under military control, each of them 
gained temporary possession of the capital, and 
there was generally under negotiation some short- 
lived combination of any two of the factional 
leaders against the third. In October (19 14) 
an abortive conference between the three v/as held 
at Aguas Calientes. In November the American 
forces were withdrawn from Vera Cruz. In 
December the self-declared President Zapata was 
at Mexico City, the self-declared President Villa 
with his forces a little farther to the north, and 
the self -declared President Carranza at Vera Cruz. 
Villa for a time appeared to be in the ascendant, 
but the balance of power was perpetually shift- 
ing as the lieutenants and nominees of the 
different generals betrayed their respective 
leaders. 

After another six months of continued anarchy 
Mr. Wilson made a further move. In January 
(191 5) he had delivered a brief but much-dis- 



126 PRESIDENT WILSON 

cussed speech at Indianapolis, in which he 
declared that it was not the business of the United 
States to interfere in Mexican internal affairs, 
even to reduce anarchy to order. 

" Have not the European nations," he asked, 
" taken as long as they wanted and spilled as 
much blood as they pleased in settling their 
affairs, and shall we deny that to Mexico because 
she is weak? No, I say. I am proud to belong 
to a great nation that says, ' This country which 
we could crush shall have as much freedom in 
her own affairs as we have.' " 

Events, however, compelled a change of atti- 
tude, and at the beginning of June 191 5 (when 
Washington, and the whole nation, was deeply 
preoccupied with the Liisitanm, controversy), the 
President issued a statement to the American 
people through the Press declaring that the United 
States could not permit the conditions then exist- 
ing in Mexico to continue. Failing the immediate 
establishment of a constitutional Government by 
the Mexican leaders, the United States Govern- 
ment would be constrained to decide what means 
it should employ " to help Mexico to save herself 
and serve her people." 

The warning had no immediate result, and 
early in August a conference of delegates of 
Latin -American States met at Washington on the 
invitation of the United States Government. In 
addition to the three A. B. C. Powers, Guatemala, 
Bolivia, and Uruguay were represented on this 
occasion. The conference issued a memorandum 
giving Mexico three months to put her affairs in 



THE MEXICAN PROBLEM 127 

order, in default of which joint Pan-American 
intervention would be undertaJcen . By this time, 
however, the Caxranzistas were gradually estab- 
lishing a mastery over their rivals, and by the 
end of October they were in effective possession 
of more than two-thirds of Mexico. At this point 
Mr. Wilson decided to recognize Carranza and 
his Government, and early in December Great 
Britain and the rest of the Entente Powers simul- 
taneously extended similar recognition. The close 
of the year 1 9 1 5 appeared to bring a new dawn 
of hope for Mexico. Once again Mr. Wilson 
might claim, with at least a colourable show of 
justice, that his policy of abstention had had its 
reward . 

But there would appear to be no finality in a 
Mexican settlement. The year 19 16, which it 
was hoped would see the progressive and com- 
plete pacification of the distracted country, was 
to bring the Washington Government far closer 
to open war with Mexico than it had been even at 
the height of the Vera Cruz crisis. The fact that 
Carranza had been recognized did not mean that 
Villa was done with. In January his bandit forces 
gave evidence of their activity by murdering a 
party of fifteen Americans near Chihuahua, and 
two months later a Villista raiding party four 
hundred strong crossed the American frontier, 
descended on the border town of Columbus, New 
Mexico, was engaged by United States cavalry, 
and finally retired with considerable loss^ against 
which was to be set the death of four American 
cavalrymen and eleven civilians. 



128 PRESIDENT WILSON 

The whole Mexican problem was reopened in 
the most acute form. A punitive detachment was 
ordered to pursue the bandits across the Mexican 
frontier, and preparations were made for sub- 
stantial reinforcements to follow on its heels. 
On March 1 5th five thousand American troops 
under General Pershing crossed the border in 
pursuit of Villa. The difficulties and possible 
consequences of the enterprise were fully under- 
stood at Washington. The prospects of rounding 
up the bandit were small, for he was a skilful 
guerilla leader, and the ground, broken every- 
where by valleys and mountains, suited his purpose 
admirably. At the .same lime the effect on Mexico 
of an American invasion, even under the g'uise 
of a punitive expedition, was problematic. Car- 
ranza at once showed sighs of resentment, and 
though he was pacified for the moment by a 
reciprocal agreement authorizing him to pursue 
Villistas across the American border in case of 
need, both his good faith and his authority over 
his followers remained doubtful. 

The Pershing expedition made rapid progress, 
penetrating so far into Mexico as to excite grave 
apprehension as to its fate in the event of a sudden 
coalition between Villistas and Carranzistas against 
the invader. The troops, however, foug'ht a suc- 
cessful engagement, in which Villa was for a 
time believed to have been killed, and then, in 
the middle of April, Washington learned simul- 
taneously of the issue by Carranza of a truculent 
note demanding the withdrawal of the troops, and 
of a treacherous attack by a town mob on an 



THE MEXICAN PROBLEM 129 

American detachment passing through Parral in 
the State of Chihuahua. Early in May a con- 
ference between the United States Generals Scott 
and Funston and the Mexican General Obregon 
resulted in a temporary and unsatisfactory com- 
promise, and a week later Mr. Wilson called out 
the militia of the border States of Texas, Arizona, 
and New Mexico for patrol work. 

Carranza's attitude grew more threatening, and 
at the end of May he again demanded with 
menaces the withdrawal of the American force. 
On June i8th Mr. Wilson called out the militia of 
all the American States for service on the Mexican 
border, but most of them mobilized in a state 
of deplorable inefficiency. A firm Note was at the 
same time dispatched to Carranza and warships 
were ordered to Mexican ports. Meanwhile news 
arrived of a serious collision between American 
troops and a body of official Carranzistas (not the 
outlaw Villistas) at Carrizal, ninety miles south of 
El Paso. Seventeen Americans were captured 
and forty killed. 

War — for which America had no adequate 
military provision — now appeared inevitable, but 
at the end of June the situation suddenly eased, 
Carranza releasing the seventeen American 
prisoners, and a little later proposing the sub- 
mission of outstanding questions to a Joint Com- 
mission of representatives of the two countries. 
President Wilson accepted the suggestion, and 
the Commission was appointed and began its 
deliberations at New London (Connecticut) early 
i.n September, transferring later to Atlantic City 

9 



I30 PRESIDENT WILSON 

(New Jersey). The tension diminished while a 
modus Vivendi was under discussion, and though 
General Pershing's force still remained in 
Chihuahua, a considerable proportion of the 
militiamen were sent back to their own States. 
The position at the end of 1916 was that the 
Commission had worked out a scheme for a joint 
patrol of the border calculated to remove the 
danger of future raids. Carranza declined the 
proposal. Villa had not been caught, and there 
was little prospect that he would be. Under 
those circumstances the early withdrawal of 
General Pershing's force was regarded as certain, 
and at the end of January 19 17 the War Depart- 
ment at Washington definitely announced its 
recall. Mexico was once more to be left to work 
out its own salvation. 

A comparatively detailed examination of the 
Mexican problem has been needed to demonstrate 
the nature and magnitude of President Wilson's 
difficulties. His critics — and they are many — 
maintain that he has shown himself a pure oppor- 
tunist in his attitude towards Mexico ; that he has 
never evolved a settled policy ; and that such 
action as he has taken from time to time has been 
bad for the United States and bad for Mexico. 
Mr. Roosevelt has characteristically declared that 
more American lives have been sacrificed while 
peace was raging in Mexico than were lost in the 
whole of the Spanish -American War. It is con- 
tended that in declining to recognize Huerta the 
President actually defeated his own object, by 
enabling the usurper to appeal effectively to 



THE MEXICAN PROBLEM 131 

national resentment against foreign interference ; 
that in attempting to influence the succession to 
Diaz, Mr. Wilson went beyond his constitutional 
powers ; that he has throughout failed to uphold 
American prestige and defend American material 
interests ; that his advice to American citizens to 
leave Mexico was a confession of weakness ; and 
his impositions and withdrawals of the embargo 
on the export of arms an indication of vacillation 
and indecision. 

That on the one hand. On the other, it is 
certain that even in the crisis of 1 9 1 6 the bulk 
of the American nation desired above all things 
to be kept out of war, partly on account of the 
inadequacy of the military establishment, partly 
because it was generally held that the result of 
war must be annexation, a course which would 
have aroused bitter hostility and suspicion 
throughout the whole of Latin America. As it 
is, the supporters of Mr. Wilson's Mexican policy 
maintain, signal proof has been given of the 
absolute disinterestedness of the United States, 
and the fruits of the President's adhesion to that 
high principle will be reaped in the establishment 
of a new relationship of trust and confidence with 
the numerous republics of Central and South 
America. 

Full justice will be done to the case for Mr. 
Wilson under this head if it is finally summarized 
in some striking declarations made to a New York 
paper ' in July 1 9 1 6 by one of the ablest members 
of the Cabinet, Mr. Franklin K. Lane, Secretary 
of the Interior. 

' New York World, July i6, 1916. 



132 PRESIDENT WILSON 

" President Wilson's Mexican policy," Mr. Lane 
asserted, " is one of the things of which, as a 
member of his Administration, I am most proud. 
It shows so well his abounding faith in humanity, 
his profound philosophy of democracy, and his 
unshakable belief in the ultimate triumph of 
Liberty, Justice, and Right. He has never sought 
the easy solution of any of the dilficult questions 
that have arisen in the last three years. He has 
always sought the right solution. 

" Mr. Wilson's Mexican policy has not been 
weak and vacillating. It has been definite and 
consistent, firm and constructive. The policy of 
the United States toward Mexico is a policy of 
hope and of helpfulness ; it is a policy of Mexico 
for the Mexicans. 

" President Wilson has clearly seen the end 
that he desired from the first, and he has worked 
toward it against an opposition that was cunning 
and intensive, persistent and powerful. If he 
succeeds in giving a new birth of freedom to 
Mexico, he most surely will receive the verdict 
of mankind." 

Between the?e conflicting estimates every 
student of the fact."? is qualified to make his choice. 



CHAPTER VIII 
FOREIGN POLICY AND THE MONROE DOCTRINE 

One of the chie. objects oi my Administration will be to cultivate 
the friendship and deserve the confidence of our sister republics ot 
Central and South America. The United States has nothing to 
seek in Central and South America except the lasting interest of the 
peoples of the two continents, the security of governments intended 
for the people and for no special group or interest, and the develop- 
ment of personal and trade relationships between the two continents, 
which shall redound to the profit and advantage of both, and interfere 
with the rights and liberties of neither. From these principles may 
be read so much of the future policy of this Government as it is 
necessaiy now to forecast. — Presidential Statement of March ii, 1913. 

For ninety years the Monroe Doctrine has been 
the charter of American foreign policy. It has 
never had, and has not now, any legal sanction. 
It is not embodied in the American Constitution. 
It has never been adopted as a permanent policy 
by a joint vote of the two Houses of Congress. 
Its prima facie authority is such as pertains to an 
enunciation of policy by a President of no par- 
ticular distinction at a time when little more than 
a generation had elapsed from the final establish- 
ment of American independence. 

The true importance of the Monroe Doctrine 
is derived, not from the immediate circumstances 
which evoked its formulation, but from the fidelity 
with which it voices the consensus of political 
thought on the foreign relations of America from 



134 PRESIDENT WILSON 

Washington's day to Wilson's. The history of 
the Doctrine may be briefly recalled. Throughout 
the second decade of last century the Spanish 
colonies in Latin America had been in revolt 
against the mother country. In 1822 the Holy 
Alliance (Russia, Austria, and Prussia) took in 
hand the chaotic afTairs of Spain, and it became 
apparent that the immediate sequel to the settle- 
ment of Spain in Europe would be an expedition 
for the subjugation of the revolted Spain in 
America. 

That prospect was equally distasteful to Great 
Britain and to the United States ; to Great Britain 
by reason of her distrust of the gtowing power 
of the Holy Alliance ; to the United States on 
account of her sympathy with what were now 
the South American republics, and her fear of 
the consequences of a bitter and prolong'ed war 
close to her borders. Accordingly Canning took 
counsel with the then American Minister in 
London, Richard Rush, and out of their conversa- 
tions emerged the declaration in respect of which 
Canning three years later claimed that he had 
" called the New World into existence to redress 
the balance of the Old." 

That declaration was addressed by President 
Monroe to Congress in his (written) message of 
December 2, 1823. It fell under three heads, 
the following being the salient clauses : — 

I . " We should consider any attempt on their 
[the members of the Holy Alliance] part to extend 
their system ' to any part of this hemisphere as 

' i.e. monarchy. 



FOREIGN POLICY 137 

dangerous to our peace and safety. With the 
existing colonies or dependencies of any European 
Power we shall not interfere." 

2. " Our policy in regard to Europe ... is 
not to interfere in the internal concerns of any 
of its Powers." 

3. "The American continents . . . are not 
henceforth to be considered as subjects for future 
colonization by any European Power." 

The Doctrine embodied the policy succinctly 
defined by the aged Jefferson six weeks earlier 
in a letter to Monroe, laying' it down that " our 
first and fundamental doctrine should be never 
to entangle ourselves in the broils of Europe, 
our second never to suffer Europe to intermeddle 
with cis -Atlantic affairs." It was invoked by 
Andrew Johnson when he insisted on the evacua- 
tion of Mexico by French forces in 1867, and 
by Cleveland when he claimed a voice for the 
United States in the boundary dispute between 
Venezuela and Great Britain in 1895 ; while 
President Roosevelt carried it a step further in 
taking over the financial administration of San 
Domingo in 1907 in order to satisfy claims that 
might otherwise have justified intervention by 
foreign creditors. 

When Mr. Wilson took office in 191 3 he found 
himself committed to a foreign policy, and an 
application of the Monroe Doctrine, of which not 
more than three of his predecessors had had ex- 
perience. The exclusion of European Powers 
from colonization of American soil had been 
sufficient to safeguard the continent in the days 



PRESIDENT WILSON 

when Monroe's Doctrine was formulated. It was 
not sufficient when the Russo-Japanese War had 
suddenly revealed the presence, ten days' steaming 
across the Pacific, of a nation equal in military 
achievement to any European Power, and destined 
inevitably to seek early opportunities of expan- 
sion. The need for broadening the formula 
became very clear during the presidencies of Mr. 
Wilson's immediate predecessors, and an unofficial 
corollary was added to it by a declaration of the 
Senate in 1 9 1 2, when Japanese were reported to 
be negotiating for interests in a harbour on the 
western coast of Mexico, that such a development 
could not be viewed by the United States without 
grave concern. 

The new importance attaching to foreign policy 
generally arose from the fact that down to the 
Spanish War of 1898 America had had no over- 
seas possessions and never contemplated acquiring 
any. No provision was made in the Constitution 
for the administration of dependencies that were 
neither States of the Union nor self-governing 
territories, and there was a strong feeling that for 
a democracy, certainly for a federal democracy, 
dependencies were an anomaly. When at the 
end of the war with Spain the Union found itself 
unexpectedly and through force of circumstances 
in possession of a number of islands in the Atlantic 
and Pacific, the first thought was how to get rid 
of them again. Cuba was never fully acquired. 
It was given its independence, with certain reser- 
vations in the matter of its foreign relations, and 
it now conducts its own affairs under a very loose 



FOREIGN POLICY 137 

American suzerainty. The Philippines were a 
more serious problem, as they were clearly not 
ready for immediate self-government, and these 
islands, like Porto Rico, were put under an execu- 
tive appointed by the President of the United 
States, with a Chamber elected on a popular 
franchise . The Democratic platform of 1 9 1 2 
demanded that the United States should " recog- 
nize the independence of the Philippine Islands 
as soon as a stable Government can be estab- 
lished." Mr. Wilson took an early opportunity 
of indicating his approval of that policy, (and it was 
clear that the matter would come before Congress 
before the new Administration had run its course. 
But more important than any single issue in this 
field was the attitude of the President to the 
policy declared in the Monroe Doctrine and all 
the implications arising from it. The Doctrine 
was popularly regarded, and with much justice, 
as being mainly negative and precautionary in 
character. Europe was warned off America ; 
America was pledged against interference in 
Europe. To Mr. Wilson Monroe's principle in- 
volved much more than that. Apart from the 
European War, which, as the President early 
realized, may entail a radical restatement or an 
almost entire abandonment of the Doctrine, he 
recognized that it must have positive applica- 
tions hardly less important than the negative. 
If it conferred rights it equally imposed duties. 
America could not prohibit European interference 
in countries where large European interests were 
at stake unless she was prepared to assume some 



138 PRESIDENT WILSON 

trusteeship for those interests herself. That doc- 
trine had been severely strained in Mexico, and 
had European Powers been less ready to repose 
confidence in Mr. Wilson a serious position might 
have arisen. In the island divided into the repub- 
lics of San Domingo and Hayti the United States 
was compelled, out of regard to its own and 
foreign interests, to enter and administer, the 
responsibility being assumed in the case of San 
Domingo by Mr. Roosevelt and in the case of 
Hayti by Mr. Wilson. 

But President Wilson carried the Monroe Doc- 
trine farther still. Influenced at once by a sincere 
altruism and by a necessary regard for the inter- 
ests of the United States, he visualized a relation- 
ship between the twenty-one republics of the 
American Continent that would, so far as there 
is any faith in bonds and treaties, guarantee the 
whole continent against the perils of external 
attack and internal dissension. The danger of 
such attack was no mere bogy of apprehensive 
statesmen. Mention has already been made of 
American distrust of the intentions of Japan, and 
the European War had inspired equal anxiety as 
to Germany's future attitude towards South 
America. In this country there seems to be no 
popular recognition of the almost limitless poten- 
tialities of South America, or of the culture and 
prosperity to which many parts of Argentina, 
Brazil, and other States have already attained. 
There is no such lack of knowledge or of enter- 
prise in Germany. German capitalists and traders 
have of late years been concentrating their efforts 



FOREIGN POLICY 139 

on South America, and characteristically applying 
themselves to their task with far more thorough- 
ness than their rivals of other nations ever 
exhibited . 

" The number of North Americans in Buenos 
Aires," wrote a well-known American author in 
1911, "is very smaJl. While we have been slowly 
waking up to the fact that South America is 
something more than ' a land of revolutions and 
fevers,' our German cousins have entered the 
field on all sides. The Germans in South Brazil 
are a neglig'ible factor in international affairs, 
but the well-educated young German who is being 
sent out to capture South America commercially 
is a force to be reckoned with. He is going to 
damage England more than Dreadnoughts or 
gigantic airships." ' 

The German trader in South America is as great 
a menace to the United States as to Great Britain, 
for it is south of Panama that the American 
manufacturer should find the chief market for 
his growing output. The urgency of Germany's 
need for commercial expansion after the war is 
palpable, and unless she secures such peace terms 
as only victory can give her, it will be to South 
America first that she will look for her market. 
The gravity of that prospect in President Wilson's 
eyes lies not in the possibility of acute competi- 
tion with American traders, but in the danger 
of the financial penetration of some weak Latin 
State, with the almost inevitable sequel of diplo- 
matic or even military intervention by the lending 

* Hiram Bingham, Across South America. 



I40 PRESIDENT WILSON 

Power in the case of friction or default. In that 
event Washington would have the choice between 
washing its hands of the Monroe Doctrine and 
embarking on a war with Germany. 

There was only one sure way in which that 
danger could be averted. The European Power 
that could look with contempt on Guatemala or 
Costa Rica or Nicaragua would find it a perilous 
adventure to come into collision with a Pan- 
American alliance backed by the naval and 
financial resources of the United States and 
Argentina and Brazil — so perilous, indeed, that 
the mere existence of the alliance would be an 
almost certain guarantee ag'ainst aggression. 
That, at least, was President Wilson's belief, and 
its influence can be traced through the whole of 
his foreign policy. He was fully conscious that 
there could be no question of tutelage by the 
United States. The mere suspicion of such 
tutelage was the greatest obstacle to the project 
he had set before him. A strong tendency 
towards jealousy and distrust marked the attitude 
of every Latin -American State towards the Union, 
fostered by such specific influences as the memory 
of the seizures of territory from Mexico in 1846 
and the more recent acquisition of the Panama 
zone during Mr. Roosevelt's Presidency. There 
was a general belief that the fixed aim of the 
United States was the extension of her political 
influence southward, and if that suspicion had 
been encouraged by armed intervention in Mexico 
all hope of carrying through a Pan-American 
agreement would have been finally dissipated. 



FOREIGN POLICY 141 

As it was Mr. Wilson was able, not merely to 
avoid creating suspicion, but actually to use the 
Mexican trouble as an instrument for the further- 
ance of his larger purpose, by meeting on equal 
terms in 1914, and again in 191 5, delegates 
from several of the Latin -American States in 
conferences on a Mexican settlement. 

Those guarantees of the good faith of the 
United States assured a favourable reception for 
the proposals publicly outlined by the President 
at the Pan-American Scientific Congress at Wash- 
ington early in 1916. The conference was 
ostensibly devoted to scientific deliberations. 
Actually it was the occasion for the discussion 
of a pronouncement of the most vital and far- 
reaching importance to every American State. 
That pronouncement was embodied in the speech 
delivered by President Wilson on January 6th, 
when he laid before the Congress proposals for 
the conclusion of an understanding between all 
the American Republics on the following basis : — 

1 . Mutual guarantees of political independence 
and territorial integrity. 

2. Settlement of all disputes not touching in- 
dependence by arbitration or friendly discussion. 

3. Maintenance in every State of the republican 
form of government. 

4. No equipment of a revolutionary force in, 
or exportation of arms from, one State to the 
detriment of the Government of another. 

In view of tlie frequency of filibustering expe- 
ditions across the boundaries of certain Central 



142 PRESIDENT WILSON 

and South American States the importance of the 
last provision needs no emphasis. 

Mr. Wilson's proposals were endorsed at the 
same Congress by Mr. Lansing, the Secretary of 
State, who dwelt on the value to every American 
republic of an understanding that would give 
expression to their common ideals for their com- 
mon benefit. The proposals were received with 
general approval, and negotiations for the con- 
clusion of a series of treaties to carry them into 
effect have since been in progress, though none 
of the treaties have as yet (February 1917) been 
ratified. 

The full significance of President Wilson's Pan- 
American alliance cannot yet be gauged, for it 
opens up possibilities on which it is too early to 
pronounce. In one direction extension inevitably 
suggests itself. The Pan-American proposals as 
at present outlined embrace the whole of the 
American continent from Cape Horn to the Great 
Lakes. Is it impossible that the northern limit 
should be, not the Great Lakes but the Arctic 
Ocean ? That is manifestly part of a much larger 
problem. British colonies, even self-governing 
colonies, do not enter into diplomatic agreements 
independently of the Mother Country, and the 
question of Great Britain's alliances will have 
to be considered as part of, or as sequel to, the 
war settlement. It need only be remarked that 
an alliance between the British Empire and a 
league of Pan-American Republics would provide 
a new and durable element of stability in inter- 
national politics. The possibility of such a 



FOREIGN POLICY 143 

development has not been overlooked in America, 
where it was pointed out by responsible critics 
immediately on the publication of Mr. Wilson's 
speech that it was absurd to talk of Pan- 
Americanism and ignore the fact that one of the 
greatest of the American Powers was not included 
in it ; and that only a combination of the Latin 
Republics, the LInited States, and Great Britain 
could make Pan -Americanism a safe and useful 
principle of foreign policy. 

The Pan-American proposals are essentially an 
extension of, not a derogation from, the Monroe 
Doctrine, for they provide effective safeguards 
for the Doctrine's central principle, the prohibi- 
tion of European interference in American affairs. 
Incidentally they are calculated to dispel all Latin 
suspicion of the United States, for they will, if 
ratified, effectively prevent the Washington 
Government from acquiring by conquest or 
annexation a single square foot of territory south 
of the Rio Grande. What effect they might have 
on European commercial penetration in Latin 
America is problematic, but the tendency would 
no doubt be towards the policy publicly advo- 
cated by Mr. Wilson, of inviting the financier 
from the Eastern hemisphere to come rather as 
an investor than a concessionaire. 

Mr. Wilson's Pan-American aims have been 
discussed thus early in this chapter on account 
of the light they throw on the character of his 
foreign policy as a whole. He has always looked 
beyond the immediate interests of the United 
States, and it is not surprising that a section of 



144 PRESIDENT WILSON 

his compatriots should accuse him from time to 
time of idealistic altruism. The grounds for that 
charge were provided by a number of decisions 
taken by the President in the first two years of 
his administration. The first of these, notable 
only as a revelation of Mr. Wilson's point of view, 
was his advice to American financiers to with- 
draw from the Six Power Group in China, on the 
ground that America ought to have no part in 
arrangements that promised to infringe China's 
diplomatic and territorial integrity. Far more 
important was the President's action in regard 
to the Panama Canal Tolls in 19 14. That ques- 
tion was a legacy from the previous /Administra- 
tion. When Great Britain had agreed to leave 
the United States a free hand in the construction 
of the proposed Panama Canal it was stipulated, 
by the Hay-Pauncefote Treaty of 1901, that the 
tolls levied should apply to the shipping of all 
nations equally and without discrimination. In 
spite of that an Act had been passed by Mr. Taft's 
Administration in 1 9 1 2 exempting all coastwise 
shipping from tolls. The ground taken by the 
defenders of this measure — including Mr. Taft, 
himself a jurist of some distinction — was that as 
coastwise trade was confined to American vessels 
decisions taken with regard to it were no concern 
of any external Power, a position vigorously con- 
tested by the British and other European Govern- 
ments. No agreement had been reached when 
Mr. Wilson took office, and the expiring' Congress 
had not responded to Sir Edward Grey's proposal 
to submit the whole matter to arbitration. There 



FOREIGN POLICY 145 

was a considerable body of opinion in America 
which held that the Act of 191 2 had contravened 
existing treaty obligations, but against that was 
to be set the strong national feeling of some 
millions of patriotic citizens quite unqualified to 
pronounce on the legal merits of the case. 

President Wilson early decided that the Act 
must be repealed, though the Democratic plat- 
form of 1 9 1 2 had pronounced in its favour . 
There was no opportunity of dealing with the 
question in the crowded session of 191 3, but 
in March 19 14 the President went down to Con- 
gress to urge the cancellation of the exemption 
provisions. In a brief but impressive address he 
gave it as his judgment that " exemption is in 
plain contravention of the Treaty with Great 
Britain concerning the Canal concluded on 
November 19, 1901 " ; and in the light of that 
conclusion he proceeded (in language that is not 
v/ithout a bearing on the much -discussed " too 
proud to fight " passage in a later speech) to 
contend that " we are too big and powerful and 
too self-respecting a nation to interpret with too 
strained or refined a reading of words our own 
promises just because we have power enough to 
give us leave to read them 3.S we please," and 
that as a consequence " the large thing to do 
is the only thing we can do — voluntary with- 
drawal from a position everywhere questioned and 
misunderstood." The message ended with an 
enigmatic sentence generally interpreted as re- 
ferring to the Mexican difficulty, in which the 
President declared that if repeal was not granted 

10 



146 PRESIDENT WILSON 

'* I shall not know how to deal with other 
matters of even greater delicacy and nearer 
consequence." 

It is a striking tribute to the force of the 
President's personality that his appeal for action 
running counter to the judgment of a substantial 
section, and to the sentiment of a much more 
substantial section, of the American people should 
have proved immediately effective. The divisions 
in the two Houses produced a good deal of cross- 
voting, Mr. Underwood and a number of 
Democrats opposing the measure, while Senator 
Lodge and several other Republicans supported 
it. The Bill was passed by the House by 247 
votes to 162, and by the Senate by 50 to 35. 
It was signed by the President in June 19 14. 

Two other minor measures concerning Panama 
revealed in the President the same desire for 
straight dealing that he liad evinced in the matter 
of the tolls. The original owner of the Panama 
Canal zone was Colombia, and it was while Presi- 
dent Roosevelt was actually negotiating with 
Colombia for its acquisition that an opportune 
revolution in the Panama area enabled him to 
abandon the deal with the larger republic and 
purchase the Canal rights from the insurgent 
population then organizing itself as the State of 
Panama. The revolution proved of the highest 
benefit to the United States, but Mr. Roosevelt's 
attitude towards Colombia was emphatically con- 
demned by a section of his own countrymen — 
and as emphatically defended by the President 
himself and his partisans. Colombia present&d 



FOREIGN POLICY 147 

various demands to the United States, the most 
tangible a claim for the payment of $10,000,000, 
which had not been met when Mr. Wilson came 
into office. Consistently with his views on Pan- 
American union, he held that the United States 
could and should afford to be generous rather 
than rigidly just in its relations with a small 
Latin republic, and he proposed the payment to 
Colombia of $25,000,000 in settlement of all 
claims. A treaty on that basis was approved by 
the Senate in 191 6, but is not yet ' ratified. -;V^s-** 

A somewhat similar arrangement was effected 
with Nicaragua, which possessed a rival canal 
route. By an incomprehensible departure from 
the President's consistent principles a Bill was 
presented by Mr. Bryan in 19 13 which would 
have practically established a United States pro- 
tectorate over Nicaragua. It failed to pass the 
Senate, and in 1 9 1 6 a treaty on much more 
reasonable lines, securing to the United States 
a naval base on the Nicaraguan coast and an 
option on the canal route in consideration of a 
payment of $3,000,000 to Nicaragua, was signed 
and ratified. The initial object of both these 
transactions was to provide against the acquisi- 
tion of rival canal routes by any extra -American 
Power ; but the spirit in which they were nego- 
tiated made effectively for the restoration of good- 
will between the United States and two weak 
but suspicious Latin republics. A similar anxiety 
for the prosperity of the Panama Canal led in 
1 91 6 to the acquisition on purely strategic 

' January 1917. 



148 PRESIDENT WILSON 

grounds of the Danish West Indies, which lay 
within strilcing distance of the Canal in the 
Caribbean Sea. Their purchase had been under 
n^egotiation on various occasions from the time 
of the Civil War onwards. 

Two other particular problems, immigration re- 
strictions and Philippine independence, and one 
general, the negotiation of peace treaties with 
all Powers prepared to accept them, occupied the 
attention of the State Department during Mr. 
Wilson's first Administration. The immigration 
question caused him much personal anxiety. 
Asiatic immigration on the Pacific slope was 
always a fruitful source of friction, and in 1 9 1 3 
matters were brought to a head by the introduc- 
tion into the Californian legislature of a Bill 
prohibiting aliens ineligible for citizenship of the 
United States from holding land in the State. 
This provision was manifestly aimed at the 
Japanese fruit -planters settled in California, and 
it provoked forcible protests on the part of the 
Japanese Ambassador. The Bill passed the 
Californian Lower House by a large majority, 
and despite a personal appeal from Mr. Wilson, 
and a conference between the State Government 
and Mr. Bryan, whom the President sent West 
to try and stop the Bill, it was passed by the 
Senate and signed by the Governor. During its 
discussion an amendment was inserted which 
saved the measure from actually infringing exist- 
ing treaties with Japan (in which case the 
Supreme Court might have invalidated it), but 
left the Act provocative and offensive to th« 



FOREIGN POLICY 149 

fruit-growers themselves, their Ambassador, and 
their Government. 

The immigration problem confronted the Presi- 
dent at Washington as well as in California. In 
1 9 14 two measures were introduced into Con- 
gress, one a general Immigration Bill, the other 
a Japanese Exclusion Bill. The latter was 
shelved through Mr. Wilson's influence, but the 
former was proceeded with and eventually passed 
by both Houses. Apart from codifying clauses, 
the measure provided for the exclusion of African 
negroes and imposed a literacy test which the 
President considered would involve harsh and un- 
just discrimination against a large class of immi- 
grants, including political refugees, whom America 
had readily admitted in the past and whom she 
should be prepared to welcome still. Accordingly 
he made this one of the rare occasions for exer- 
cising his Presidential veto, and the Bill in con- 
sequence lapsed. It was, however, reintroduced 
in the following session in a form even more 
antagonistic to the President's views, and passed 
the Senate by an overwhelming majority (64 
votes to 7). In January 191 7 it once again 
came before the President for his assent, and 
once again that assent was refused. 

Japan was indirectly involved in another ques- 
tion which has caused and will cause some 
embarrassment to succeeding administrations at 
Washington. The Philippine Islands, like Cuba 
and Porto Rico, passed from Spanish control to 
American after the war of 1898, but conditions 
in the two cases were entirely different, in that 



ISO PRESIDENT WILSON 

the Philippines lay some four thousand miles from 
the shores of America. Therein lay the crux 
of the Philippine problem. The islands could 
not be defended if the United States should ever 
find itself involved in a war with a naval Power. 
Interest, therefore, confirmed the conclusion which 
sentiment dictated, that they should be relin- 
quished at the earliest possible moment. That, 
however, was no simple matter. Spanish adminis- 
tration had been such as to rule out any idea of a 
restoration of the Philippines to Spain. At the 
same time, civil war in the islands had been with 
difficulty suppressed by American troops, and a 
further outbreak was certain if the United States 
forces were withdrawn. There was equally strong 
objection to leaving the Philippines defenceless 
within the orbit of the expanding empire of 
Japan . 

The Democratic platform had demanded, and 
President Wilson identified himself with the 
demand, that the Philippine Islands should be 
given their independence as soon as they were 
deemed capable of managing their own affairs, 
and that the neutralization of the group should 
if possible be secured by international agreement. 
Though Mr. Taft, who had been the first 
Governor -General of the Philippines, asserted that 
the islands would not be ready for self-govern- 
ment for fifty years, Mr. Wilson, in his message 
to Congress in December 19 14, urged the passage 
of a measure granting a fuller degree of autonomy 
and pointing towards early independence. A Bill 
embodying this principle became law in August 



FOREIGN POLICY 151 

191 6. It substituted for the nominated " Philip- 
pine Commission " an elected Senate of twenty- 
four ; and for the existing Assembly a House of 
Representatives of ninety. It generally enlarged 
the powers of the Insular Government, and put on 
record the purpose of the United States "to with- 
draw their sovereignty over the Philippine Islands 
and to recognize their independence as soon as a 
stable government can be established therein." 

Throughout his administration Mr. Wilson had 
given unmistakable proof of his desire that the 
nation should so far as might be live at peace 
with all men. He was resolutely opposed to all 
aggressive action, and in his speech at Mobile 
in October 191 3 he had specifically pledged the 
United States against any annexation of alien 
territory. In all controversies that had arisen 
with foreign Powers it had been his fixed prin- 
ciple, maintained in the face of heated criticism, 
to subordinate the interests of his own coimtry 
to what he considered to be the dictates of 
justice, or the needs of some larger policy look- 
ing beyond the immediate issue. The Panama 
Tolls Bill, the proposal for compensation to 
Colombia, and in some degree the Mexican policy, 
are cases in point. 

But apart from negotiations on specific ques- 
tions Mr. Wilson worked assiduously at measures 
designed to consolidate and perpetuate the pacific 
relations of the United States with the rest of the 
world. He had inherited from the preceding 
administration the principle of the so-called 
" cooling-off " treaties, under which the signa- 



152 PRESIDENT WILSON 

tory nations undertake to submit to an inter- 
national commission all disputes not covered by- 
existing arbitration treaties, and to refrain from 
hostile action for a year, or such shorter time as 
may suffice for the commission to reach a 
decision. It was, however, during Mr. Wilson's 
Presidency that the treaties were actually carried 
through. During 19 14, 191 5, and 19 16 treaties 
were definitely ratified with Great Britain, 
France, Russia, Italy, Spain, the three Scandi- 
navian Powers, China, and most of the Latin - 
American Republics. 

The terms of the treaties are not beyond 
criticism, for the interval of a year, valuable as 
its " cooling -off " effects may be, might give 
scope for the unhindered continuance of the very 
offences of commission or default that were the 
subject of dispute. None the less, the contrac- 
tion of treaties with so many foreign Govern- 
ments evidenced a growing faith in the principle 
of arbitration and discussion, and in the case of 
Latin America in particular the ratification lof 
the treaties was well calculated to open the way 
to the adoption of the larger policy outlined in 
the early part of this chapter. 



CHAPTER IX 
THE EUROPEAN WAR 

The people of the United States are drawn from many nations, and 
chiefly from the nations now at war. It is natural and inevitable that 
there should be the utmost variety of sympathy and desire among 
them with regard to the issues and circumstances of the conflict. Some 
will wish one nation, others another, to succeed in the momentous 
struggle. It will be easy to excite passion and difficult to allay it- 
Those responsible for exciting it will assume a heavy responsibility — 
responsibility for no less a thing than that the people of the United 
States, whose love of their country and whose loyalty to its Govern- 
ment should unite them as Americans all, bound in honour and affec- 
tion to think first of her and of her interests, may be divided into 
camps of hostile opinions hot against each other, involved in the war 
itself in impulse and opinion, if not in action. Such divisions among 
us would be fatal to our peace of mind, and might seriously stand in 
the way of the proper performance of our duty as the one great 
nation at peace, the one people holding itself ready to play a part of 
impartial mediation and speak the counsels of peace and accommoda- 
tion, not as a partisan but as a friend. — Address to the American Pcot>le, 
August, 1914. 

The unlooked-for outbreak of the European War 
in August 1 91 4 added immeasurably to Mr. 
Wilson's burdens. He was weighed down at the 
time by a great personal anxiety, his wife being 
in the first week of August laid on her death- 
bed at the White House. Mexican affairs were 
at a critical stage, for though Huerta had just 
taken ship for Europe the effects of his abdica- 
tion were not yet revealed, and American troops 
were still in possession at Vera Cruz. The Presi- 

153 



154 PRESIDENT WILSON 

dent well knew, moreover, that though America 
might avoid actual participation in the war she 
could not fail to be directly and gravely affected 
by its reactions, and time and energies that should 
have been concentrated on programmes of 
domestic reform must of necessity be largely 
devoted to the negotiation of delicate problems 
of foreign policy. 

There was at the outset no serious question of 
American intervention in the war. When England 
took the fateful decision on August 4th the mean- 
ing of the sudden breaking of the storm of con- 
flict had hardly been grasped in the Western 
hemisphere. The documents published later in 
the official Blue Books and White Books and 
Red Books were not available ; only Belgium's 
neutrality, and not her women, had as yet been 
violated ; and though the direction of American 
sympathies might be clear^ American judgment 
was at first held for the most part in suspense. 

A tremendous responsibility was laid on Presi- 
dent Wilson. Political tradition and the letter 
of the Constitution make the President of the 
United States both a leader and an interpreter 
of the people, and it rests with the individual 
to lay predominant emphasis on whichever he 
will of the two heads of his Presidential duty. 
Woodrow Wilson had for seventeen months played 
the r61e of leader, and the nation accordingly 
looked to him with the greater expectancy in 
the crisis of August 1914- In shaping his 
course at such a juncture he was bound to take 
cognizance of certain indisputable facts. Tem- 



THE EUROPEAN WAR 155 

peramentally and by tradition the American 
people was essentially paciiic. Its first Presi- 
dent had warned it against foreign entanglements, 
and the Monroe Doctrine had served as a 
permanent proclamation of benevolent isolation. 
Apart from the tearless war with Spain in 1898, 
America had not for over a century fought an 
external campaign, and she had virtually no 
dependencies to draw her into controversy Avith 
any European Power. And while she had a 
serviceable Navy, her Army was organized on a 
scale which forbade all thought of early participa- 
tion in a serious land campaign. 

But there were more cogent reasons than these 
why America should in 1 9 1 4 cling instinctively 
to her traditional policy of isolation. Though 
Washington had fought to make America inde- 
pendent and Lincoln had fought to keep her 
united, Mr. Wilson, fifty years after Lincoln's 
battles and a hundred and thirty after Washing- 
ton's, found himself President of what was not 
yet a cohesive nation. The census of 19 10 
showed that the United States contained over four 
million Germans and Austro -Hungarians who were 
actually foreign-born, while there were close on 
nine millions of Germans alone returned as of 
foreign parentage. The danger that war against 
Germany would mean civil war needed no 
demonstration. 

Of war with the Entente Powers there was 
no serious prospect. There was not, it is true, 
in America that enthusiasm for Great Britain that 
some exponents of the unity of the Anglo-Saxon 



156 PRESIDENT WILSON 

race too confidently assume. The large Irish 
section of the population was ill-disposed towards 
England, and throughout the war the strongest 
bond of transatlantic sympathy has been between 
America and France. Between Americans and 
Englishmen there had grown up that curious 
relationship sometimes established between two 
men who, knowing they will never go as far as 
a serious quarrel, can afford to be perpetually 
irritating one another. So far had that tendency 
been carried that it was possible recently for 
one of the most thoughtful of American reviews, 
in its anxiety for an Anglo-American under- 
standing, to solicit help from " the two peoples 
who will find their security in such understanding, 
the two peoples most able to mediate, the people 
of Canada and the people of France." ' Another 
fact to be remembered is that prior to the war 
there was in America no feeling against Germany 
and considerable feeling against Russia. 

Even now we are prone in this country, and 
in the later months of 1914 we were much m.ore 
prone, to judge America by the Eastern States. 
For that our Press is largely to blame. Nine 
quotations out of ten cabled across from American 
journals are taken from New York papers, with 
an occasional reference to the Philadelphia 
Ledger, or the Boston Transcript, or the Spring- 
field Republican. From west of the Alleghanies 
not a voice reaches us, unless it be a rare citation 
from the Chicago Daily News, or Herald, and 
the very names of powerful organs like the 
' The Neiu Republic^ December 9, 1916. 



THE EUROPEAN WAR 157 

Kansas City Star, or the St. Louis Globe-Demo- 
crat, or the Detroit Free Press are unknown out- 
side Fleet Street. It is not surprising therefore, 
though it is on many grounds unfortunate, that 
Englishmen have failed throughout to realize that 
in the West and Middle West the European War 
has never yet become, as it has in New England, 
the first preoccupation in the public mind.i The 
West is still an undeveloped_ country, and all it 
asks is to be left to its business of working out 
its own great destiny. That view is short-sighted 
and limited, no doubt. It takes no account, for 
example, of the function of the British Fleet as 
a shield of the Monroe Doctrine. But it is not 
wholly selfish. The West is not concerned merely 
with the accumulation of dollars. Mr. Henry 
Ford, the so-called pacifist fanatic, has built up 
at Detroit a business in which commercial pros- 
perity is combined with some of the best indus- 
trial conditions in America. As a Chicago 
correspondent of The Times recently pointed out 
in an instructive article,^ the West has ideals, 
social, industrial, municipal, to the realization of 
which both the principle and the fact of war are 
essentially antagonistic. It fears and hates war 
for reasons that demand respect. These are con- 
siderations that must be reckoned with. If many 
of them were lost— and pardonably lost — on the 
average Englishman, none of them was lost on 
Mr. Wilson, who never allowed himself to forget 
that he was President of the West as well as of 
the East. 

' Written in 1916. The Tiines December 14, J916. 



158 PRESIDENT WILSON 

From the first the President interpreted the 
neutrality of the United States as requiring an 
attitude of the most scrupulous — as it has some- 
times appeared on this side of the Atlantic, the 
most excessive — detachment on the part of its 
constitutional head. On August 4th he issued 
a formal proclaixiation of the neutrality of the 
United States ; on August 5th, twenty -four hours 
before the death of his wife, he circulated to all 
the belligerents a Note expressing his readiness 
to act as mediator at any future time when oppor- 
tunity might offer ; and on August 14th he 
emphasized the necessity for true neutrality in 
an address the salient passages of which stand 
at the head of this chapter. He foresaw from 
the first day of war that America was facing a 
crisis. Millions of her polyglot population would 
be torn by conflicting loyalties. British and 
Germans, Belgians and Hungarians, Poles and 
Finns — would they in the moment of testing 
prove false or true to the country of their new 
allegiance ? If his appeal to every American to 
put America first were effective, out of the 
ordeal new and potent bonds of union would be 
forged. If it failed, the peril of disintegration 
was imminent. 

None the less, the call to Americans to show 
themselves " impartial in thought as well as 
in action," and the warning against indicating 
" a preference of one party to the struggle before 
another," were too much for a large section of 
opinion in the United States, though the more 
moderate of the President's critics recognized that 



THE EUROPEAN WAR 159 

whatever might be thought of his words his 
address was dictated by nobler motives than a 
mere negative desire to avoid entanglement in 
the war. Rightly or wrongly, he looked forward 
to the part that America as the greatest neutral 
Power might at some time be called to play as 
mediator, and he believed that the one hope of 
discharging that high function with success was 
to preserve in the meantime what was bound to 
be characterized in many quarters as an attitude 
of exaggerated and unworthy detachment. 

President Wilson can have been under no illu- 
sions as to what the policy he had chosen would 
involve. For him personally it would in many 
respects have been the easiest course to commit 
his country to intervention forthwith. That de- 
cision would at least have saved him from 
entanglement in the endless series of perilous 
complications arising out of the German sub- 
marine campaign, the British blockade, the 
machinations of German agents in America, and 
the abuse by belligerents of the laws of war and 
of humanity. 

It was soon made impossible for America to 
remain neutral in spirit, whatever she might be 
in act. The outrages in Belgium, verified as 
they were by the Bryce Commission, whose Chair- 
man was known and honoured above all other 
living Englishmen in America, threw a new light 
on the meaning of the war. The United States 
was not a guarantor of Belgian neutrality, but she 
was a signatory to the Hague Conventions of 
1907, whose provisions Germany had ruthlessly 



i6o PRESIDENT WILSON 

and cynically flung to the winds under the impulse 
of a military necessity that knew no law. The 
world turned instinctively to the great neutral 
Republic for the word of judicial protest and 
condemnation that her part in the violated Con- 
vention gave her a legal title as well as an 
unassailable moral right to utter. 

That word was not spoken. America has 
earned the undying gratitude of Belgium for the 
unstinted generosity with which her citizens have 
provided and her agents administered the relief 
that has kept millions of Belgians from starva- 
tion. But it was not till more than two years 
of war had passed — when Germany was crown- 
ing her crimes by deporting the civil population 
of Belgium to work in German factories and mines 
— that an official protest against the martyrdom 
of that unhappy nation was for the first time 
voiced by the spokesman and leader of the 
American people. 

Mr. Wilson's silence was no doubt dictated 
by his fear of being driven, so early in the war, 
into a position of apparent partisanship, and it 
is fair to him to add that the most embittered 
opponent of his policy, Mr. Roosevelt, at this 
.point shared his views. " Sympathy " [with 
Belgium], wrote the ex -President, " is compat- 
ible with full acknowledgment of the unwisdom 
of our uttering a single word of official protest 
unless we are prepared to make that protest effec- 
tive ; and only the clearest and most urgent 
national duty would ever justify us in deviating 
from our rule of neutrality and non -inter- 



THE EUROPEAN WAR i6l 

ference." ' Great Britain and France — which, it 
may be objected, are not entirely unbiased judge? 
—have found full comprehension of that attitude 
beyond them. 

In view of the gravity of the protracted con- 
troversies between America and Germany on the 
conduct of naval warfare, it is of some importance 
to recall that the first Note of protest drafted 
at Washington was addressed, not to the Wilhelm- 
strasse but to Downing Street. It was distinctly 
friendly in character, but expressed America's 
perplexity and concern at the new rules of war 
at sea formulated by the Allied Governments. 
Full justice has hardly been done to the difficulty 
of Mr. Wilson's position in his negotiations with 
this country over the interference with American 
overseas trade. Soon after the beginning of the 
war the Declaration of London began to be jetti- 
soned bit by bit, and faced with the fact that 
a port like Rotterdam or Flushing constituted 
for commercial purposes practically the mouth 
of Germany, the Allies undeniably worked the 
recognized doctrine of continuous voyage and 
ultimate destination very hard. 

Early in 191 5, moreover, a series of moves 
took place that laid American commerce imder 
grave disabilities. Germany established Govern- 
ment control of practically all food supplies ; 
Great Britain thereupon declared all food con- 
traband ; Germany replied by announcing a 
blockade of Britain as from March 1 8th ; and 
Britain retaliated by Orders in Council proclaim- 

' In the Outlook, September 23, 1914. 
II 



152 PRESIDENT WILSON 

ing a blockade of Germany, under which the 
right was reserved to the British Navy to detain 
and take into port " ships carrying goods of pre- 
sumed enemy destination, ownership, or origin." 
The result of these successive declarations was 
to supersede the old laws of the sea as commonly 
understood in favour of a new code, which, as 
America contended, had the validity only of a 
municipal law of an individual belligerent and 
could not be substituted for the recognized canons 
of international law. 

The real difficulty was not that a departure had 
been made from established custom, — America, 
like every other nation, realized that the advent 
of the submarine had introduced a factor sub- 
versive of all accepted rules, — but that by the 
middle of 1 9 1 5 or earlier a neutral had come to 
feel that the arbitrary proclamations of the 
different belligerents had left him with no solid 
ground beneath his feet. In the case of Great 
Britain American irritation at the delays atten- 
dant on the examination of cargoes in port 
instead of on the high seas was accentuated by 
the censors' interference with mails — to which 
merchants more than once attributed (apparently 
without much justice) the loss of important 
orders. On our side there was some disposition 
to ride off too lightly on the plea that while we 
were merely delaying American cargoes Germany, 
was murdering American sailors. That was true, 
and America recognized that it was true ; but 
President Wilson had always insisted on the sound 
principle that he was discussing business only 



THE EUROPEAN WAR 163 

with the particular Power concerned, and, as he 
twice reminded Germany in forcible words, there 
could be no question of playing ofif one belligerent 
against the other. It would have smoothed some 
rough places if more regard had been paid in 
this country to a judgment of that shrewd and 
able diplomatist Lord Lyons, who wrote ifrom 
the Embassy at Washington fifty years ago : •, 
" The Americans, both Government and People, \ 
are I .tTiink much pleased by attentions and civili- \ 
ties, and very prone to think themselves slighted. \ 
This quality may be sometimes turned to good ; 
account, and should certainly be borne in mind 
when it is necessary to keep them in good 
humour." ' 

As it was, speakers and writers were, with 
individual exceptions, at no particular pains to 
consider American susceptibilities, and there was 
considerable surprise when in November 1 9 1 5 a 
Note couched in language of marked acerbity 
was handed by the American Ambassador to Sir 
Edward Grey. The phraseology, there is reason 
for believing, was the work of Mr. Lansing, not 
of President Wilson, and it was strongly depre- 
cated in some sections of the American Press. 
Here it was generally assumed to be in some 
measure a studied counterweight to the grave 
communications the President was finding it 
necessary to address to Germany, and a detailed 
reply by Sir Edward Grey, oiTering explanations, 
and conceding some modifications, of the pro- 
cedure to which objection was taken, averted any 

' Lord Lyons f by Lord Newton, chap. ii. 



1 64 PRESIDENT WILSON 

danger of increased friction between the two 
countries. Some fresh resentment was occasioned 
in the summer of 1916 by the action of the 
British Foreign Ofhce in forbidding British 
traders to do business with certain specified 
American firms, set out in a " black list," 
which were in the ordinary way of commerce 
giving assistance to the enemy ; but here again 
a reasoned explanation by Sir Edward Grey 
greatly reduced the tension, and no serious or 
permanent strain was laid on Anglo-American 
relations. 

President Wilson's attitude in all these con- 
troversies has been scrupulously correct. While 
not prepared to disregard what he held to be 
undue invasions of the rights of American 
shippers, he has throughout the negotiations with 
this country preserved a just sense of propor- 
tion, and firmly refused to allow his differences 
of opinion with Great Britain to be exploited by 
friends of Germany in America. 

But the President had more anxious negotia- 
tions than these upon his hands. While he was 
suing Great Britain for trespass he was called 
on to prosecute Germany for murder. The 
original announcement of Berlin (in February 
191 5) that the waters round the British Isles 
were to be considered as a " war zone," into 
which neutrals would venture at their peril, had 
been received in America with resentment and 
concern, and a Note was immediately dispatched 
warning the German Government that if American 
vessels, or the lives of American citizens, should 



THE EUROPEAN WAR 165 

be lost " the United States would be constrained 
to hold the Imperial Government of Germany 
to a strict accountability for such acts of their 
naval authorities." The spring of 191 5 was a 
time of acute anxiety for the President. While 
he was being daily assailed with protests from 
American traders at British interference with their 
commerce, he feared to learn at any moment of 
a German outrage which would bring the '* strict 
accountability " clause of his recent Note into iplay. 

His apprehensions were soon realized. It is 
impossible to follow in detail the procession of 
shelled or torpedoed ships — the Falaba, the Cash- 
ing, the Gulflight, and the rest — ^across the diplo- 
matic stage. It will be sufficient here to recall 
briefly the leading cases, the Liisitanla, the Arabic, 
the Hesp<eri(in, and the Sussex, to which, in the 
unfolding of events, it may become necessary to 
add the Marina. On May 8, 1915, the civilized 
world was struck with horror by the news that 
on the previous day the great Cunarder Lusitania 
had been torpedoed by a German submarine off 
the south of Ireland. Over eleven hundred lives 
were lost, more than a hundred being those of 
American citizens. Anger at the unexampled 
atrocity was even more intense in America than 
in Great Britain, already bitterly inured to the 
brutalities of war, and it burned the fiercer by 
reason of a warning that had been issued from 
the German Embassy at Washington some ten 
days earlier advising Americans not to travel 
by the Lusitania. 

A section of public opinion, particularly in New 



1 66 PRESIDENT WILSON 

England, demanded a declaration of w<ar on 
Germany. The President took no immediate 
action, and in a speech three days later, in which 
no specific reference was made to the Lusitania, 
he used words which have been remembered 
against him from that day onward. Since his 
critics have done him some injustice by isolating 
the four words " too proud to fight " for contemp- 
tuous reiteration, it will be well to quote the 
offending passage as a whole. 

" The example of America," said Mr. Wilson, 
" must be a special example, and must be an 
example not merely of peace because it will not 
fight, but because peace is a healing and elevating 
influence of the world, and strife is not. There is 
such a thing as a man being too proud to fight ; 
there is such a thing as a nation being so right 
that it does not need to convince others by force 
that it is right." 

However academically defensible those words 
may be — and they are academically defensible — 
it is difficult to acquit the President of a culpable 
indifference to the interpretation that would 
throughout two continents be put on such lan- 
guage at such a crisis. It is a defect to which 
there are several parallels, notable among them 
the declaration in the League to Enforce Peace 
speech of May 191 6, that "with the causes 
and objects of the war we have no concern," 
and the passage in the Peace Note of December 
191 6 implying at first glance that the writer 
regarded the purposes and ideals of the two 
belligerent groups as identicaL In none of these 



THE EUROPEAN WAR 167 

cases was the underlying sentiment at fault ; in 
none of them was the language used incapable 
of bearing the meaning it was meant to bear ; 
but in all of them the phraseology was such as 
to invite the ordinary man rather to misunderstand 
than to understand. The President was capable 
of foreseeing, and ought to have foreseen, what 
would inevitably happen. It was a serious mis- 
fortune that he should have encouraged a mis- 
reading of his sentiments and character on the 
part both of the nation on whose loyal suppoirt 
his position depended and of the nation with which 
he had now to deal as a potential antagonist. 

There was, however, no lack of dignity or 
firmness in the Note dispatched to Germany three 
days later. It recapitulated the previous German 
outrages at sea ; it vig^orously reasserted the 
right of American citizens to " take their ships 
and travel wherever their legitimate business calls 
them upon the high seas " ; and it called on the 
German Government for disavowal, reparation — 
so far as reparation was possible — and guarantees 
against the recurrence of any similar violation of 
the law of nations. 

The German reply to these demands was un- 
satisfactory in the extreme, and the President 
found it necessary in continuing the controversy 
to make use of language with which his pacifist 
Secretary of State felt unable to identify himself. 
Accordingly Mr. Bryan resigned and was suc- 
ceeded by Mr. Robert Lansing, an international 
lawyer of considerable repute. The second Lusi- 
tania Note reviewed the facts of the tragedy; 



1 68 PRESIDENT WILSON 

declared that the American Government was 
" contending for something much greater than 
mere rights of property or privileges of com- 
merce, for nothing less high and sacred than the 
rights of humanity " ; proceeded to define those 
rights ; laid down the principle that " the lives 
of non-combatants cannot lawfully or rightfully 
be put in jeopardy by the capture or destruction 
of an unresisting merchantman " ; and called 
for an undertaking that the German Government 
would forthwith take the necessary measures to 
ensure that these rights and principles should be 
duly respected. 

This communication evoked a conciliatory, if 
not wholly reassuring, response, the good effect 
of which was modified by what Germany termed 
the " unfortunate accident " of the torpedoing of 
the American vessel Nebraskan. The destruc- 
tion of the Nebraskan, however, was soon over- 
shadowed by greater events. On August 19th 
the White Star liner Arabic was torpedoed oft" the 
south coast of Ireland in broad daylight, with 
the loss of American lives. 

The situation now created was so menacing that 
the German Ambassador, Count Bernstorfi", went 
hot -foot to the White House to beg the President 
to suspend judgment till the full facts and expla- 
nations were received. A week later he assured 
Mr. Lansing, the Secretary of State, that the 
** Imperial Government regrets and disavows this 
act," and would pay an indemnity for the American 
lives lost on the Arabic. On September ist a 
general undertaking was given that " liners will 



THE EUROPEAN WAR 169 

not be sunk by submarines without warning, and 
without ensuring the safety of the lives of non- 
combatants, provided that the liners do not try to 
escape or offer resistance." In transmitting the 
undertaking Count Bernstorff added that it em- 
bodied decisions arrived at before the Arabic was 
sunk. That assertion assumed unexpected import- 
ance when news was received of the torpedoing, 
no more than three days later, of the Allan liner 
Hesperian 130 miles west of Queenstown. 

This was the culmination, and for a moment 
it seemed as if the Hesperian might stand to a 
German war of 1915 as the Maine stood to the 
Spanish War of 1898. Moreover the count 
against Germany embraced a far more compre- 
hensive series of crimes than the outrages at 
sea. From the earliest days of the war the 
activities of German agents on American soil 
had been ceaseless and notorious. Bridges had 
been blown up, bombs placed on outward-bound 
liners, armament factories fired, and strikes engi- 
neered in order to impede the export of munitions 
to the Allies. In August 191 5, while the Lusi- 
iania controversy was in full activity and the 
Arabic outrage in contemplation, the New York 
World published a series of revelations of the 
machinations of German diplomatic agents. 
Among them Herr Dernburg, an ex -Colonial 
Secretary, had so far exceeded all bounds in his 
propagandist enthusiasm that President Wilson 
had indicated, soon after the Lusitania disaster, 
that the further presence of the over -zealous 
diplomatist on American soil was undesirable. 



I7d PRESIDENT WILSON 

In the course of September evidence came to 
hand definitely convicting the Austrian Ambas- 
sador, Dr. Dumba, and the German Naval and 
Military Attaches, Captain Boy -Ed and Captain 
von Papen, of various gross abuses of their diplo- 
matic position. President Wilson wasted no time 
in deliberation. Diplomatists were accredited to 
him, not to Congress, and he took action forth- 
with. Austria was requested to recall her 
Ambassador. She made some attempt to argue 
the question, whereupon Dr. Dumba, who had 
privately boasted of his power to " disorganize 
and hold up for months, if not entirely prevent, 
the manufacture of munitions in Bethlehem and 
the Middle West," was handed his passports and 
dispatched without further dallying to the nearest 
neutral European port. Boy -Ed and von Papen 
followed him in December. 

The President's decisive action in the case of 
the diplomatists was a characteristic expression 
of his earnest and intense anxiety for the preser- 
vation of the unity of America in what he spoke 
of as " these days that try men's souls." Such 
machinations he viewed, not as an offence against 
diplomatic decencies or against American dignity, 
but as a wedge driven into the fissure that the war 
must inevitably open in the fabric of national 
unity and cohesion. The peril to a composite 
nation like the United States was of the gravest, 
and no man was more sensible of its gravity 
than the President. In his review of the events 
of 1 9 1 5 he spoke, in language whose emphasis 
caused no surprise, of " citizens of the United 



THE EUROPEAN WAR 171 

States, born under other flags, but welcomed under 
our generous naturalization laws to full freedom 
of opportunity in America, who have poured the 
poison of disloyalty into the very arteries of 
our national life, and who have sought to bring 
the authority and good name of our Government 
into contempt, to destroy our industries, wherever 
they thought it effective for their vindictive 
purpose to strike at them, and to debase our 
policies to the uses of foreign intrigue." That 
indictment culminated in a request for legislation 
to strengthen the hands of the Administration in 
dealing with " such creatures of passion, dis- 
loyalty, and anarchy." 

Meanwhile the Arabic controversy, seriously 
aggravated by the Hesperian crime, had been 
pursuing its course. The assurances given by 
Count Bernstorff at the beginning of September 
by no means met the requirements of the case. 
They referred only to liners, not merchant vessels, 
and they did not touch the question of the safety 
of passengers turned into open boats in mid- 
ocean. Early in October, however, the matter 
was carried a step farther. Acting on advices 
from Berlin, the German Ambassador officially 
informed Mr. Lansing that the attack on the 
Arabic had been undertaken in disregard of the 
instructions issued to the commander, and that 
the Imperial Government regretted and disavowed 
the act, and was prepared to pay an indenmity 
for the American lives lost. For a time it 
appeared that the President's policy of patient 
negotiation — a policy by no means easy to recon- 



I7'2 PRESIDENT WILSON 

cile with his original promise to hold Germany 
to strict accountability if her threats of piracy 
were carried out — had at last had effect. Certain 
assurances had been given and submarine activity 
did, in fact, appear to slacken, though the 
destruction of the Italian Ancona, the French 
Ville de Ciotat, and the British Persia, crimes 
ascribed, it is true, not to German but to Austrian 
submarines, showed how easily the pledges of 
Berlin could be evaded. 

Meanwhile ,the controversy had taken another 
turn, by which America's prestige was recognized 
to be directly involved. Early in 191 6 the ques- 
tion of the status of armed merchantmen came 
under discussion. Here, again, the advent of 
the submarine had necessitated a re -examination 
of existing precedent — though in claiming the 
right to arm merchantmen for defence the Allies 
had international law definitely on their side, and 
America early in the war had refused to exclude 
such vessels from her ports. In view, however, 
of Germany's contention that what was defensive 
armament against a cruiser was offensive arma- 
ment against a submarine, Mr. Lansing sounded 
the belligerents on the abandonment of the prac- 
tice of arming merchantmen. Before a reply 
had been received from the Allies Germany 
destroyed any case she might have had by 
announcing that she would attack all such vessels 
without warning, as having the character of 
auxiliary cruisers. Simultaneously a Teutonic 
agitation broke out in America in favour of 
warning^ Americans officially against travelling on 



THE EUROPEAN WAR I73 

such vessels, and resolutions in that sense were 
introduced in both Houses of Congress. 

President Wilson did not hesitate. His own 
position was immediately defined in a public 
declaration. " To forbid our people to exercise 
their rights for fear we might be called upon 
to vindicate them/' he wrote to Senator Stone, the 
Chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee of 
the Senate, " would be a deep humiliation indeed. 
It would be an implicit, all but expUcit, acquies- 
cence in the violation of the rig'hts of mankind 
everywhere, and of whatever nation or allegiance." 
The gravity of the situation was accentuated by 
the evident prevalence in Germany of the belief 
that America was not behind the President in his 
refusal to warn American citizens off armed liners. 
At all costs that illusion must be dispelled, and 
the President immediately took a characteristic 
decision. 

The resolutions in Congress (urging that 
Americans should be forbidden passages on 
armed liners) might have come to a vote in due 
time, but it was more likely that they would 
never get past the Committee on Rules, with 
whom it lay to select the business that should 
come before the Chamber. President Wilson 
determined that the issue should be faced. He 
wrote personally to Mr. Pou, the Chairman of the 
Committee on Rules in the House, urging an early 
vote on the resolutions. That and nothing less 
(such as the suggested alternative of a vote of 
confidence) would satisfy him. Congress acceded 
to his demand. Early in March the resolutions 



1^4 PRESIDENT WILSON 

were put to the vote. In the Senate they were 
"tabled" — i.e. allowed to lapse — by 64 votes 
to 14, and in the House by 276 to 142. The 
President's authority to represent America was 
vindicated. 

The votes of Congress were taken early in 
March 1916. Within three weeks the most 
flagrant of all Germany's violations of her pledges 
was perpetrated. On the 24th a German sub- 
marine torpedoed the cross -Channel passenger 
steamer Sussex, with many Americans on board. 
The eyes of belligerents and neutrals alike were 
turned on President Wilson. There was a brief 
investigation of the facts, which left no room for 
the erection of even the flimsiest fabric of defence, 
and on April 19th Mr. Wilson went in person 
before Congress to deliver an address that un- 
equivocally condemned the whole principle of sub- 
marine warfare as illegal and inhuman, and 
embodied the declaration that " unless the 
Imperial Government should now immediately 
declare and effect an abandonment of its present 
methods of warfare against passenger and freight 
vessels, the Government can have no choice but 
to sever diplomatic relations with the Govern- 
ment of the German Empire altogether." A 
Note to that effect had already been dispatched 
to Berlin. 

The reply to what was, if words had any 
meaning, an ultimatum, was anxiously awaited. 
Germany had the choice between compliance and 
a breach of relations, and a breach of relations 
would almost inevitably mean war. She chose 



THE EUROPEAN WAR 175 

compliance. At the beginning of May a Note 
was received in Washington which contained, 
embedded in a mass of justificatory explanations, 
an undertaking that merchant vessels should be 
subjected to visit, search, and destruction only 
in accordance with the recognized principles of 
international law, and that " such vessels, both 
within and without the area declared as a naval 
war zone, shall not be sunk without warning, and 
without saving human lives, unless the ship 
attempt to escape and offer resistance." Mr. 
Wilson acknowledged the undertaking in a Note 
which observed frigidly that the United States 
would " rely upon the scrupulous execution hence- 
forth of the now altered policy of the Imperial 
Government," and sternly rejected the suggestion 
that the President ought now, as a quid pro quo, 
to turn his attention to the AlUes' misdemeanours 
— a proposal which he declared that the United 
States " cannot for a moment entertain, much less 
discuss." 

At last, after more than twenty months of 
warfare and outrage, Mr. Wilson had forced 
Germany into a repudiation of her settled policy 
I and a pledge of its abandonment. What share 
ii the anti-submarine activity of the British Navy 
1! had had in bringing the German Government 
' to that decision cannot be determined. Every- 
thing now depended on whether Germany would 
respect her latest pledge. As to that the facts 
are not in dispute. She has not respected it. 
The successive violations of the undertaking pf 
May 19 1 6 need not be recapitulated here 



176 PRESIDENT WILSON 

Among them the sinking of the American -owned 
Marina, destroyed at the end of October 191 6 
by a German submarine, seems likely to be taken 
as the test case. The negotiations on that vessel's 
fate had not, when this chapter was being* written, 
reached a conclusive stage. 

This is not the place to attempt a general 
criticism of Mr. Wilson's handling of the sub- 
marine controversy. The salient facts have been 
stated, and they provide ample material for judg- 
ment. That the President has fulfilled either the 
spirit or the letter of the passage in which in 
February 1 9 1 5 he had undertaken to hold 
Germany to strict accountability for the destruc- 
tion of American vessels or the loss of American 
lives it is hardly possible to maintain. It is 
easy to charge him, as plenty of his political 
opponents in America have charged him, with 
vacillation and irresolution and incompetent 
stewardship of his country's interests. It is 
less easy to assess at their true value the unques- 
tionably weighty considerations that restrained 
him from the decisive step that would have meant 
open war. His own natural pacifism and the 
danger that a war with Germany would mean 
widespread civil disturbance in America have 
already been touched on. There was the further 
fact that in a military sense America's inter- 
vention would, except in the field of finance, have 
counted for relatively little. Her Army was 
negligible and the Allies were already so 
superior at sea as to discount the value of 
the accession of the American Navy. 



THE EUROPEAN WAR 177 

In addition, the fact that a Presidential election 
was imminent cannot be altogether ignored. No 
reputable critic has suggested that Mr. Wilson 
was capable of putting political strategy before 
national duty, but it is a grave step for an 
expiring administration to plunge a nation into 
war, and the President's hesitation to take that 
step was intelligible and just. And, beyond all 
these considerations, it is certain that Mr. Wilson 
never abandoned his belief that by maintaining 
her neutrality to the end America would best 
qualify herself for the function he earnestly de- 
sired to see her exercise, of offering mediation 
at the appropriate moment and exerting her 
influence in the framing of safeguards against 
the recurrence of any such conflict as the 
present. 

There is an interesting resemblance between 
Mr. Wilson's attitude on the submarine issue and 
Mr. Asquith's attitude on conscription in Great 
Britain. Each was instinctively and by convic- 
tion opposed to a step to which he was being 
strongly urged. Each was resolved to avoid it 
so long as it could be safely avoided. Each 
was prepared to face it in the last resort. And 
each knew well that if his country was to be 
led into acceptance of a course repugnant to great 
masses of its citizens it could only be by the 
avoidance of all precipitate action and at the 
behest of a leader known to have held back so 
long as holding back was possible. Mr. Asquith 
took what appeared the inevitable step and 
carried the codntry with him. Mr. Wilson has 

12 



178 PRESIDENT WILSON 

not yet ' taken the corresponding step, but it 
must be recognized that so far he has as faith- 
fully reflected American feeling over relations with 
Germany as Mr. Asquith did English feeling over 
conscription. Whether a President of the United 
States should be less content to reflect and more 
resolved to lead is a question for constitutional 
authorities to debate. 

It remains to add the beginning of what is 
still an unfinished chapter in Mr. Wilson's rela- 
tions with the belligerents. For over two years 
the President resisted both his own impulses and 
the pressure of a large section of American 
opinion and refrained from any offer of early 
mediation or proposals for peace. Towards tlie 
end of 1 9 1 6, however, an almost insensible 
change came over the international situation. 
Germany's economic position was known to be 
bad and Austria's worse, but her armies, though 
gradually yielding to the growing pressure of 
their opponents, were still in possession of large 
tracts of Allied territory. The Allies, on the 
other hand, while their general strength was far 
superior to Germany's, had obtained no such 
decisive advantages in the summer campaign as 
pointed to an early conclusion of the war. There 
was a strong temptation to neutrals, themselves 
suffering severely from the war (this was true 
even of America, despite the unexampled pros- 
perity of some of her industries), to advance any 
proposal that might bring peace nearer. 

In the autumn of 191 6 Mr. Wilson felt the 

' January 191 7. 



THE EUROPEAN WAR 179 

time had come to make a definite, if tentative, 
advance. His decision was taken about the 
middle of November, but some time was spent 
on the preparation of the Note he proposed to 
address to all the belligerents. It was couched 
in the most restrained and guarded language, and 
marked throughout by a dispassionate and de- 
tached impartiality, which was felt in most of 
the Allied countries to be excessive even for a 
neutral engaged in so delicate a mission as Air. 
Wilson's. That impression was encouraged by 
the wording of a single passage, on which far 
loo much attention and criticism was concen- 
trated. " The objects," wrote the President, j 
" which the statesmen of the belligerents on both '\ 
sides have in mind in this war are virtually the 1 
same, as stated in general terms to their own 11 
people and to the world," It is obvious that that 
sentence was entirely non-committal and sug- 
gested only — what was substantially true— that the 
professed objects of both sides were virtually the 
same. Unfortunately, it was possible for critics 
so disposed — and many critics were so disposed 
—to contend that Mr. Wilson was asserting that 
the two groups of belligerents stood actually on 
the same moral level. The author of the Note 
could be charged with no ofifence more heinous 
than an inadvertent ambiguity, but it was regret- 
table that in a diplomatic document of suchi 
delicacy and importance room should have been 
left for any ambiguity at all. 

President Wilson's actual proposals could not 
have been more moderate and tentative, amount-; 



1 8b PRESIDENT WILSON 

ing to no more than a suggestion that something 
would be gained if each group of belligerents 
would do what had never been done throughout 
more than two years of war — state explicitly 
the objects for which they were fighting and 
the terms on which they would be prepared to 
abandon the struggle. Such a comparison of 
terms might prove that the obstacles to a settle- 
ment were not as insuperable as had been 
feared. Mr. Wilson put forward no peace pro- 
posals. He did not offer mediation. And he 
did not suggest the opening of direct negotia- 
tions. His action marked a stage precedent to 
any such steps as those. 

The American Note was to have been sent to 
all the belligerents a little before Christmas, but 
just before it was ready for dispatch a new 
element was introduced into the situation in the 
shape of an unexpected and melodramatic peace 
offer by Germany. Her announcement of her 
readiness to consider terms of settlement was 
everywhere received with profound suspicion, and 
small hope was entertained that it would lead to 
any promising development. The President was 
placed in a serious dilemma. Should he issue 
or hold back the Note he was on the point of 
forwarding to Europe ? If he issued it, he would 
be charged, as he was in fact freely charged by 
his critics in America, with lending support to 
" the German peace intrigue." On the other 
hand, the intervention of a neutral might enable 
the Allies to move much farther towards a 
beginning of negotiations than they would be 



THE EUROPEAN WAR i8i 

disposed to do in response to German proposals. 
In this belief the Note was issued. It was 
received by the belligerents on December 20th, 
published in America on the 21st and in England 
on the 22nd. 

In America the President's action had a mixed 
reception. He had taken it entirely on his own 
responsibility, and the Senate, which later had 
before it a resolution on the subject, declined 
to do more than associate itself with the general 
purpose of his Note. The public was at first 
more perplexed than critical. There was much 
speculation as to the President's motives, on which 
some doubtful light was thrown by an indirect 
but none the less pregnant remark let fall by 
Mr. Lansing, to the effect that action was neces- 
sary because America was drawing near to the 
verge of war. Considered comment was divided. 
There was probably some basis for all the three 
hypotheses most in favour : that Mr. Wilson was 
animated by purely humanitarian and pacific 
motives ; that he had private knowledge of 
Germany's economic condition which led him to 
believe in the possibility of an early peace ; and 
that, having reason to fear a fresh outbreak of 
German submarine activity that must draw 
America into the conflict, the President was 
making an eleventh -hour endeavour to avert that 
catastrophe by bringing the whole war to an end . 

The American Note was very differently 
treated by the two groups of belligerents. 
Germany replied with great brevity and almost 
precipitate haste, stating no terms, but proposing 



i82 PRESIDENT WILSON 

an immediate round-table conference at which 
conditions of peace might be considered. That 
went far beyond anything Mr. Wilson had sug- 
gested, and the proposal, coupled with the 
omission of any semblance of a statement of 
terms, was generally regarded in America as a 
deliberate evasion of the issue. 

The Allies' Note was three weeks in prepara- 
tion and took the form of a detailed and explicit 
reply to Mr. Wilson's suggestions. It cordially 
accepted in principle his proposal for a League 
of Nations to safeguard the peace of the world 
on a basis to be laid by the settlement of the 
present war ; it set out the aims and purposes 
of the Allies, and in response to the President's 
invitation specified the actual territorial readjust- 
ments which, subject to negotiation on individual 
points, they were resolved to effect. They set 
the price high, but they stated it clearly. The 
general effect of their Note in America was to 
dispel any misgivings as to the President's action 
and incidentally to strengthen his hands in nego- 
tiating' with Germany on the submarine question 
and in opposing the latent movement for an 
embargo on supplies for the Allies. 

Speculation as to whether Mr. Wilson had a 
further move in contemplation was rife. Doubt 
on that head was soon resolved, the President 
unexpectedly appearing in the Senate on 
January 2ist and delivering an address that 
covered the whole field of the post-war settle- 
ment. The occasion of the speech was chosen 
with much discretion. Mr. Wilson's advocacy 



THE EUROPEAN WAR 183 

of the proposed League to Enforce Peace had 
been freely criticized in America on the ground 
that he was not competent either to bind the 
country by the treaties on which the stability of 
the new order must rest, or to use the armed 
forces of the United States in the interests of the 
League. In addressing the Senate the President 
was dealing with the body whose concurrence he 
would need if the necessary treaties were to be 
ratified. He was able, therefore, at once to 
answer his critics at home, and in so doing to 
enunciate principles which it was important to lay 
before the belligerents but undesirable to lay 
before them in a further direct communication. 

The speech concerned itself primarily with the 
nature of the peace America would be ready to 
endorse. In discussing that the President was 
not, as might at first appear, travelling beyond 
his province, for if after the war the United States 
was to join a League to preserve the status quo 
the nature of that staius quo was clearly a matter 
of legitimate concern to her. Mr. Wilson was 
eager to take his part in the work of preserving 
peace, but not in the work of preserving a bad 
peace. He was prepared to join in guaranteeing 
a settlement, but it must be a settlement con- 
taining the essential elements of stability. Most 
of the conditions laid down by the President had 
been frequently approved in public declarations 
by the Allied Powers. They included "peace 
without victory " ; equality of rights for all 
nations, great and small ; the right of nationali- 
ties to decide their own allegiance and form of 



1 84 PRESIDENT WILSON 

government ; the right of access to the sea for 
every great people struggling for development ; 
the freedom of the seas ; and subsequent dis- 
armament , 

The term " freedom of the seas " has never 
yet been adequately explained, and President 
Wilson left its significance still indefinite. His 
reference to " peace without victory " he ex- 
plained to be merely a warning against " a peace 
forced upon the loser," a peace that " would be 
accepted in humiliation, under duress, at intoler- 
able sacrifice, and would leave a sting, a resent- 
ment, a bitter memory upon which terms of 
peace would rest, not permanently but only 
as upon quicksand." The Allies had already 
repudiated the idea of forcing such a peace as 
that. The phrase " peace without victory " none 
the less provoked much criticism and some 
hostility, and it must be ranked with the curiously 
unhappy or ambiguous expressions of which 
isolated examples are to be found in almost all 
Mr. Wilson's more important pronouncements on 
the war. 

In the main the President's address was well 
received. It was both defended and criticized 
in the Senate itself— the frank abandonment of 
the Monroe Doctrine being the main object of 
attack— and in Europe responsible opinion in the 
Allied countries generally approved the speech. 
At any rate, it had kept the subject of peace to 
the fore, and at the end of January the era of 
actual negotiations seemed sensibly less remote 
than at any earlier period of the war. 



THE EUROPEAN WAR 185 

ADDENDUM.' 

Within a fortnight of the day the President 
addressed the Senate the situation took a dramatic 
turn. On January 31st the German Government 
presented to the American Ambassador at Berlin 
a Note giving warning of an unrestricted sub- 
marine campaign. Germany declared what was 
virtually a blockade of Europe, and informed the 
United States Ambassador that one American 
vessel would be permitted to cross to England 
each week, following a specified course and 
arriving and leaving on specified days. All other 
vessels entering the war zone would do so at 
their peril. 

The challenge was met by immediate action 
at Washington. The German Note reached 
America late on the evening of Thursday, 
January 31st. x\ll day on Friday the President 
was in conference with his Ministers and the 
political leaders. At 1.57 on Saturday afternoon 
Count Bernstorff, the German Ambassador at 
Washington, was handed his passports by Mr. 
T. M. Woolsey, the Assistant -Solicitor of the 
State Department. Mr. Gerard had already been 
recalled from Berlin and the American Consuls 
throughout Germany instructed to relinquish their 
posts forthwith. Diplomatic relations between the 
two Governments were completely severed. 

At two o'clock the same day the President 
appeared before Congress . In a brief, impressive, 
and severely practical message, that took no more 

' See Note, p. 9. 



186 PRESIDENT WILSON 

than sixteen minutes in delivery, he recalled 
what had been popularly known as " the Sussex 
pledge" of April 191 6; quoted textually 
Germany's new threat to sink indiscriminately 
all vessels entering the so-called " war zone " ; 
and added, amid an outburst of applause on the 
part of the assembled Senators, Representatives, 
and Supreme Court Judges : "I, therefore, 
directed the Secretary of State to announce to 
his Excellency the German Ambassador that all 
diplomatic relations between the United States 
and the German Empire are severed and that 
the American Ambassador in Berlin will imme- 
diately be withdrawn, and in accordance with this 
decision to hand to his Excellency his passports." 

" If," the President concluded, " American 
ships and American lives should in fact be 
sacrificed by German naval commanders in heed- 
less contravention of the just and reasonable 
understandings of international law and the 
obvious dictates of humanity, I shall take the 
liberty of coming again before Congress to ask 
that authority be given to me to use any means 
that may be necessary for the protection of our 
seamen and our people in the prosecution of their 
peaceful legitimate errands on the high seas. I 
can do nothing less. I take it for granted that 
all neutral Governments will take the same 
course." 

America stood at the brink of war, confident 
in the knowledge that the reins of power would 
for four years more be held by the man who 
by the establishment of the Federal Reserve 



THE EUROPEAN WAR 187 

Board had set American financial stability on a 
new basis, who by his personal campaign had 
roused the country to a sense of the needs of the 
Army and Navy, who had riveted South America 
to North by his Pan-American foreign policy, 
and who by his restraint and forbearance had 
welded a nation of divided sympathies into a solid 
whole in resistance to the threatened invasion of 
its rights. 



CHAPTER X 
PREPAREDNESS AND PERMANENT PEACE 

Our principles are well known. It is not necessary to avow them 
again. We believe in political liberty and founded our great Govern- 
ment to obtain it, the liberty of men and of peoples — of men to choose 
their own lives, and of peoples to choose their own allegiance. 

Our ambition also all the world has knowledge of. It is not only 
to be free and prosperous ourselves, but also to be the friend and 
thoughtful partisan of those who are free or who desire freedom the 
world over. If we have had aggressive purposes and covetous 
ambitions, they were the fruit of our thoughtless youth as a nation, 
and we have put them aside. We shall, I confidently believe, never 
again take another foot of territory by conquest. We shall never 
in any circumstances seek to make an independent people subject 
to our dominion ; because we believe, we passionately believe, in the 
right of every people to choose their own allegiance and be free of 
masters altogether. 

For ourselves we wish nothing but the full liberty of self-develop- 
ment ; and with ourselves in this great matter we associate all 
the peoples of our own hemisphere. — Address to Manhattan Club, 
New York, November 1915. 

There is no more than a superficial inconsis- 
tency, if there is even that, between President 
Wilson's advocacy of a programme of " pre- 
paredness," naval, military, and commercial, un- 
precedented in the history of the United States, 
and his unqualilied support of proposals directed 
towards so preserving the peace of the world as 
to render the projected fleets and armies mere 

wasteful superfluities. Mr. Wilson is an idealist, 

1S8 



PREPAREDNESS AND PEACE 189 

but he is not a visionary. The Mexican cam- 
paign and the European War had awakened 
America with a sudden shock to the peril of 
her own defencelessness. That peril, moreover, 
lay not ten years ahead, or five, or two. It stood 
already at the very door. Mr. Wilson himself 
had spoken in language of the utmost gravity 
of not knowing what the morrow, literally the 
morrow, might bring forth. Even the certainty 
— if there had been any certainty, and there was 
none — that after the war the projected League of 
Peace would fulfil all the hopes centred on, it would 
not have relieved the President of the necessity of 
safeguarding his country's interests during that 
undetermined period, the duration of the war. 

But the idea of preparedness and the idea of 
a League of Peace were not merely not irre- 
concilable, they were intimately associated. The 
basis of the League to Enforce Peace, whose 
principles Mr. Wilson accepted and endorsed, was 
not the elimination of force, but the application 
of force to the defence of justice and right. The 
ofiicial proposals of the League included a clause 
enacting that " the signatory Powers shall jointly 
use forthwith both their economic and military 
forces against any one of their number that goes 
to war, or commits acts of hostility, against 
another of the signatories before any question 
arising has been submitted " [to the judicial 
tribunal or council of conciliation ] . If the United 
States was prepared to commit herself to such pro- 
posals as that, she must be prepared to back her 
word with such military contribution as her popu- 



I90 PRESIDENT WILSON 

lation, area, and importance in the family of 
nations required. 

There was, in the view of most Americans, 
another and a stronger reason why the United 
States should arm herself in the interests of peace. 
No man could foresee the result of the European 
War or the nature of the settlement, but it was 
reasonable to assume that for some years at least 
Europe would be left divided into two hostile 
and embittered groups, one, indeed, definitely pre- 
dominant, but the other still sufficiently powerful 
to perpetuate anxiety and uncertainty as to the 
future. There would, moreover, in the event of 
the Allies' victory, be a number of small 
nationalities whose security would demand inter- 
national guarantees more effective than the agree- 
ments that had failed to save Belgium from 
destruction in 19 14. If the United States enter- 
tained any thought of securing the triumph of 
justice at an international council by throwing 
her weight on the side of one or other of two 
opposing groups, if her backing was to give any 
assurance to a reconstituted Belgium or an inde- 
pendent Poland or a new Jugoslavia, she must, 
60 her politicians contended, take with her into 
the council of the nations arguments more potent 
than fair words and high ideals. 

Such intervention in European affairs would, 
of course, mean complete abandonment of 
America's traditional policy of isolation ; but 
the President and most other practical observers 
of political development realized that the days of 
isolation were already at an end. Mr. Wilson 



PREPAREDNESS AND PEACE 191 

declared publicly in 19 16, in language that 
startled and alarmed many of his fellow -citizens, 
that this was the last world-war America could 
ever keep out of ; and if she believed herself 
doomed in the future to submit her cause to the 
bitter arbitrament of war there was overwhelm- 
ing reason why she should take a part, and a 
leading part, in the endeavour to substitute for 
that the higher arbitrament of peaceful settle- 
ment. The belief that a period of armed and 
guarded peace must precede any future era of 
disarmament was a complete justification of Presi- 
dent Wilson's simultaneous advocacy of a larger 
Army and Navy and of a League to secure the 
peace of the world. 

But the first purpose of preparedness was 
national security. From the day of the destruc- 
tion of the Lusitania war with Germany was 
always a real and perilous possibility ; and the 
necessity of sending a punitive expedition into 
Mexico had revealed the comparative worthless - 
ness of the State militias even for the defence 
of the one land frontier where military opera- 
tions might be necessary. A hardly less con- 
vincing revelation of America's ability to depend 
on her own resources had been provided in 
another sphere by the sudden toll levied at the 
outbreak of war on the mercantile marine of the 
world. German merchant ships had been swept 
from the sea before the first month of war had 
ended, and thousands of vessels on the register of 
Great Britain and other Allied Powers were with- 
drawn from their regular vocation to serve as 



192 PRESIDENT WILSON 

fleet -auxiliaries, mine-sweepers, transports, supply- 
ships, and patrols. The available carrying 
capacity of the world had suddenly become hope- 
lessly unequal to the needs of the world, and 
as American exporters found freight rates soar- 
ing to unknown heights, and goods accumu- 
lating on the quays for lack of ships to 
carry them away, they realized for the first time 
what America's poverty in merchant tonnage 
involved. 

Some 8 per cent, of American foreign trade 
had hitherto been carried in American vessels, 
and even those vessels became steadily fewer 
through submarine losses as the war wore on. 
The day had been when America was a sea- 
faring nation. The New England colonies bred 
a race of enterprising and courageous seamen. 
In the first decade of the nineteenth century over 
90 per cent, of American produce was carried 
in American bottoms and less than 10 per cent, 
in foreign. By the first decade of the twentieth 
those proportions had been almost precisely 
reversed. Any preparedness policy that did not 
include immediate and comprehensive measures 
for the acquisition or construction of a mercantile 
marine would fall far short of meeting the 
national need. 

Accordingly the Administration, as soon as the 
lessons of Mexico and the European War had been 
assimilated, decided on proposals falling under 
three heads : a larger Navy, a larger Army, and 
au adequate mercantile marine. Of these the 
naval programme took first place. America has 



PREPAREDNESS AND PEACE 193 

little reason to maintain a large standing Army. 
She has few overseas possessions to garrison and 
only one land frontier to protect, for the boundary 
line that for over three thousand miles separates 
the United States from Canada has, since the 
Treaty of Ghent more than a century ago, been 
secured by the pledged word of both the con- 
tiguous Powers and by the armed forces of 
neither. To the south the Mexican frontier was 
under patrol, and the demand for a Federal Army 
in that region might, as the troubles that suc- 
ceeded Diaz's abdication had shown, at any 
moment become urgent. The danger of conflict 
with any Latin -American State had been greatly 
diminished by Mr. Wilson's Pan-American policy, 
but that policy itself made it necessary that the 
United States should be ready in case of need to 
bring to the defence of South American integrity a 
much greater force than she had been accustomed 
to keep under arms. It was therefore the view 
of the President that the Army reform demanded 
by the situation was a measure that would pro- 
vide for a comparatively small increase of the 
standing Army, and at the same time secure a 
much larger and more efficient body of reserves 
as a second line. 

The case for an enlarged Navy was much 
stronger. The whole of the Pacific and Atlantic 
coasts of the United States were vulnerable to 
hostile attack, and if more intimate relations were 
to be developed with the South American States 
it was clear that the United States Navy would 
have to bear a large share of responsibility for 

13 



194 PRESIDENT WILSON 

their defence. Even apart from that, naval operai- 
tions in the European War had thrown a new 
light on the requirements of a modern fleet, and 
merely to bring America's existing forces up to 
the necessary level of efficiency would involve an 
extensive programme of expenditure and con- 
struction. 

Though the naval programme was far mor« 
formidable than the military it provoked less oppo- 
sition, partly because its necessity was generally 
recognized, partly because it touched the daily life 
of the people less closely than proposals for the 
enrolment of a large force of citizen -soldiers. 
The Naval Appropriation Bill of 19 14- 15 was of 
normal character, providing for the construction 
of two Dreadnoughts, six destroyers, seventeen 
submarines, an oil -ship, a transport, and a hospital 
ship . In February 191 5 — ^after six months of 
the European War — the House passed the Bill 
with amendments reducing the number of sub- 
marines from seventeen to twelve and cutting out 
the transport and hospital ship altogether. There 
was as yet no appreciation of the urgency of the 
need for preparedness. Mr. Wilson, who had 
approved a programme based on ordinary re- 
quirements, had in his December messag'e strongly 
deprecated the demand already articulate in some 
quarters for panic legislation in the interests of 
naval and military defence. There was, he had' 
assured Congress, no reason to fear that America 
would be drawn into the war, and there was every- 
thing to gain by postponing new programmes 
of preparedness till the operations then in pro- 



PREPAREDNESS AND PEACE 195 

gress in Europe should have thrown decisive Hght 
on the new requirements of modem warfare. The 
Army, he agreed, should be strengthened by- 
developing the efficiency of the National Guard. 
In the case of the Navy they were dependent 
for guidance on the experts, and the experts were 
altogether at variance as to wliat the needs of 
the future would be. " But/' added the Presi- 
dent, " we [the Administration] are not unmindful 
of the great responsibility resting upon us. We 
shall learn and profit by the lesson of every 
experience and every new circumstance ; and 
what is needed will be adequately done." 

Looking back to that address more than a year 
later — in January 19 16 — Mr. Wilson made a frank 
confession of change of view. " Perhaps," he 
told a New York audience, " when you learned 
that I was expecting to address you on the subject 
of preparedness, you recalled the address which 
I made to Congress something more than a year 
ago, in which I said that this question of pre- 
paredness was not a pressing question. But more 
than a year has gone by since then, and I would 
be ashamed if I had not learned something in 
fourteen months." Who had been the President's 
mentors in that fourteen months* interval ? Two 
of them were the captains of the submarines that 
had sunk the Liisitania and the Arabic. A third 
was Dr. Dumba, the now expelled Austrian 
Ambassador ; a fourth and fifth were Captains 
von Papen and Boy -Ed. And to them was to 
be added the army of German spies and agents 
diligently employed on the destruction of 



196 PRESIDENT WILSON 

American factories and the instigation of 
American citizens to disloyalty to America. 

The lesson that the President had learned had 
been learned by his fellow -citizens of every State 
in the Union. In spite of the opposition of the 
considerable pacifist school, the conviction that 
new measures of preparedness were essential 
spread rapidly during the summer and autumn 
of 1 9 1 5 . And while the people were preparing 
themselves for acceptance of the principle, the 
President and his advisers were busy on the 
detailed programme to be laid before Congress 
in December. Mr. Wilson's first action was to 
appoint (through the Secretary of the Navy) a 
strong Naval Advisory Board to formulate a com- 
prehensive scheme of naval development. Mr. 
Thomas Edison, the great inventor, was made 
chairman of the Board, and it began its work? 
in October. A scheme of Army reform was being 
worked out simultaneously. 

When the Sixty -fourth Congress met in 
December the President was ready with specific pro- 
posals. The naval programme covered a period of 
five years. In that time there were to be added 
to the existing resources of the United States — 

10 battleships, 

6 battle -cruisers, 

10 light cruisers, 

50 destroyers, 

100 submarines, 

4 gunboats, 

6 hospital, oil-fuel, repair, and ammuni- 
tion ships. 



PREPAREDNESS AND PEACE 197 

It was the most formidable programme ever 
submitted to any Parliament. The battleships 
were to be of 32,500 tons, 5,000 tons heavier 
than the Queen Elizabeth, and armed with 16-inch 
guns as against the Queen Elizabeth's 15 -inch. 
Their estimated cost was just under £4,000,000 
apiece. The battle -cruisers were to be 850 feet 
long (190 feet longer than the Lion), with a 
speed of 32-35 knots and a tonnage of 35,000. 
The guns were to be 14-inch, and the estimated 
cost of each ship £4,257,000. The programme 
was to involve an expenditure approaching 
$250,000,000 in the first year, and increasing 
later, and included a demand for an immediate 
addition to the personnel of 7,500 sailors, 2,500 
apprentices, and 1,500 marines. 

The Army proposals were on a less extensive 
scale. For a country of the area of the United 
States the standing Army was astonishingly small. 
It numbered on paper well under 100,000, and 
of these over 60,000 were employed in various 
non-combatant posts or on garrison duty in the 
Philippines, Hawaii, Porto Rico, and elsewhere, 
leaving little more than 30,000 available for 
immediate combatant service. Behind this first 
line stood the State mihtias, amounting in all 
to some 120,000 men, which the President was 
empowered to call up for Federal service in case 
of emergency. But their efficiency stood gener- 
ally at a low level, and they were totally unpre- 
pared, as the summons to them for the protection 
of the Mexican border showed, to respond to a 
sudden call. The General Staff had laid before 



198 PRESIDENT WILSON 

the President proposals for the increase of the 
regular Army to 250,000, with a reserve of the 
same number, and 500,000 second-line troops, 
but Mr. Wilson declined to put forwa,rd demands 
on that scale. The scheme he actually laid before 
Congress provided for an additional 40,000 
regulars (bringing the nominal strength of the 
Army to 141,843 officers and men), and a force 
of 400,000 " citizen soldiers," to be raised in 
the ensuing three years at the rate of 133,000 
a year. They would serve three years with the 
colours and three in reserve, their service in the 
former period consisting of some weeks of inten- 
sive training each year in association with the 
regular Army. 

A joint naval and military programme of this 
magnitude was sufficiently staggering to a nation 
with the traditions of the United States, and it 
was not surprising that the endeavour to get his 
proposals through Congress constituted the first 
call on the President's energies in the year 19 16. 
On the broad question of preparedness the country 
was in the main at one with Mr. Wilson, though 
men like Mr. Henry Ford strenuously opposed 
his concessions to militarism, and Mr. Bryan 
accused him of having gone " joy -riding with 
the Jingoes." At the other end of the scale were 
Mr. Roosevelt and those whio supported his 
demand for much more extensive schemes than 
were proposed, and between the two lay a mass 
of opinion in the West and Middle West naturally 
apathetic on any military question, but not in- 
capable of being convinced of the wisdom of the 
President's proposals. 



PREPAREDNESS AND PEACE 199 

Preparedness became immediately what Mr. 
Wilson was determined it should be, a 
national and not a party issue. He had no 
desire to see Congress carry his measures over 
the heads of an antagonistic or indifferent elec- 
torate. When the defence of the country was 
in question he was resolved to have the country 
behind him. Accordingly he set out in January 
(191 6) on a tour of the Union, in the course of 
which he was to impress the necessity for a pre- 
dominant Navy on millions who had never seen 
the sea, and rouse to a sense of national duty 
the hundreds of thousands of young men on whose 
voluntary co-operation, together with their em- 
ployers* concurrence, the creation of his citizen 
army depended. 

The tour admirably fulfilled its purpose. In 
New York the President warned his hearers, " I 
cannot tell you what the international relations 
of this country will be to-morrow — and I use the 
word literally." At Pittsburg he declared that 
no man in the United States kjiew what a single 
week, a single day, a single hour, might bring 
forth. At Milwaukee, speaking to a Germaa- 
American population, he appealed for support for 
the preparedness proposals to fortify him in his 
double task of maintaining America's honour 
and keeping her out of war. At Kansas he 
emphasized the need for safeguarding ship- 
ments of " the wheat of the Kansas fields 
and of the other great flowering acres of the 
United States." 

At St, Louis he was betrayed — for the remark 



200 PRESIDENT WILSON 

can only be regarded as an unpremeditated 
hyperbole — into the unexplained and inexplicable 
declaration that the American Navy, having regard 
to the extent of the area it must defend, " ought 
in my judgment to be incomparably the greatest 
navy in the world." Some of his political oppo- 
nents condemned the President's preparedness tour 
as undignified and sensational ; but that was not 
the general verdict, and it was soon apparent 
that Mr. Wilson's application of his uniform rule 
of carrying the people with him in great matters 
was fully justified by the support accorded to his 
proposals. 

But while the country as a whole approved the 
preparedness proposals in principle, there was, 
as regards Army reform, a serious division of 
opinion on detail. Apart from the extremists who 
were demanding provision for compulsory service, 
there was a radical cleavage between those who 
proposed to make the existing State mihtias the 
basis of the new Continental Army of 400,000, 
and those who would place the whole enter- 
prise under exclusively Federal authority. The 
Bill as drafted by the Secretary of War, Mr. 
Garrison, favoured the latter principle, the 
Committee on Military Affairs in the House 
the former. It was the old fight between 
the States and the Union, and the Democratic 
tradition was of course support of States rights. 
Mr. Wilson stood aloof from the controversy. 
He was resolved to raise the 400,000 men, but 
the question of how they should be raised was 
not in his view of fundamental importance. H« 



PREPAREDNESS AND PEACE 201 

was content to leave the decision to Congress, 
and declined to accede to the War Secretary's 
appeal that he should throw his personal weight 
on the side of the centralizing party. 

After a brief correspondence with the President 
Mr. Garrison tendered his resignation. It was 
accepted, and Mr. Newton D. Baker, of Cleveland, 
Ohio, was appointed Secretary of War in his place . 
With the Army and Navy Bills before Congress, 
both the general preparedness campaign and the 
controversy on Army reform methods were vigor- 
ously sustained. A monster preparedness parade 
in New York in May, headed by Mr. Edison, was 
followed by similar demonstrations at Chicago, 
Boston, and Washington. President Wilson, 
carrying a United States flag, marched at the 
head of the Washington procession. 

Under such stimulus the Army Bill became 
law in June. In its final form it provided for 
a larger force than had at first been proposed. 
The regular Army was raised from a nominal 
strength of 100,000 to 175,000, with reserves 
that will amount when the Act is in full opera- 
tion to some 230,000, or a total of rather more 
than 400,000. Behind these will stand a second- 
line army of another 400,000, the President's 
Continental Army of citizen -soldiers, based on 
the reorganization (under Federal control) of the 
militia, or National Guard, of the several States. 
One of the most important clauses of the Act 
provides that " if for any reason there shall not 
be enough voluntary enlistments to keep the 
[militia] reserve battalions at the prescribed 



202 PRESIDENT WILSON 

strength, a sufficient number of the unorganized 
militia (which comprises every citizen between 
1 8 and 45) shall be drafted into the service of 
the United States to maintain each of such bat- 
talions at the proper strength." This, of course, 
is conscription. No military measure comparable 
in importance had been enacted in the United 
States since Lincoln carried through his proposal* 
for compulsory drafts in 1863. 

It is nevertheless clear already that the 19 16 
Army Act cannot stand in its present form. Since 
it became law the fiasco of the mobilization on 
the Mexican border has spelt the fate of the 
" federalized militia " provisions of the Act. 
Three months after being called up the con- 
tingents on the border were without the equip- 
ment necessary for action in the fiield, and 63 per 
cent, of the force consisted of virtually untrained 
men. In the light of that experience the demand 
for compulsion has made distinct headway, and 
if it is to be successfully countered by the majority 
who unquestionably oppose it a further reorga- 
nization, providing for a larger first -line Army 
and adequately paid and adequately equipped 
reserves, will be necessary at an early date. 

The fortunes of the Navy Bill were not dis- 
similar. The main difference between the two 
measures was that while the decisions of Congress 
slightly increased the provision for the Army 
they slightly diminished the provision for the 
Navy. By the time the Navy Bill was sent to 
the President for signature in September the 
hundred submarines had been reduced to sixty- 



PREPAREDNESS AND PEACE 203 

seven, but the number of the larger units re- 
mained unchanged. Congress had authorized a 
programme unexampled in the history of any 
country, which would raise the United States Navy 
to a position of paper supremacy over every 
rival fleet except Great Britain's. 

While two of the great preparedness measures 
had reached the Statute Book after what must 
be regarded, considering the magnitude of the 
issues involved, as a relatively smooth passage, 
the third, the Merchant Shipping Bill, was 
still the centre of violent controversies. The 
necessity for some measure that would rescue 
American manufacturers and merchants from their 
perilous dependence on foreign shipping was not 
disputed. What was in question was the method 
to be followed. In the past Republicans had 
frequently proposed, and Democrats regularly 
opposed, subsidies for American ships. The 
alternative plan, Government ownership, involved 
a controversial extension of the principle of 
strengthening the Federal Government. 

Mr. Wilson had been ahve to the importance 
of the merchant shipping question from the first. 
In his speech of acceptance in 1 9 1 2, two years 
before war broke out, he had dwelt on the handi- 
cap imposed on American merchants through their 
dependence on the shipping of countries that were 
America's mercantile competitors, and he urged 
then that " we must build and buy ships in 
competition with the world." The war confirmed 
the President's resolve to press for legislative 
action, and in December 1914 he appealed for 



204 PRESIDENT WILSON 

favourable consideration for a Bill presented in 
the previous session, providing for the creation 
of a corporation, 51 per cent, of whose stock 
should be Government -owned, for the purchase 
and operation of merchant ships. He spoke 
strongly in the country on behalf of the Bill, 
but Congress was not well disposed towards it. 
With the end of the session near at hand the 
Senate divided 48 to 48 on an important clause, 
and a few days later voted 48 to 48 again. 
When Congress adjourned the measure had not 
passed. 

The discussions in the country ran on through 
191 5, the prospect of naval expansion supplying 
another argument for the acquisition of merchant 
ships that would be needed as fleet auxiliaries 
in time of war. In December 191 5 President 
Wilson laid the matter before Congress again. 
He repeated his earlier arguments ; he dwelt 
on the function of trading vessels as links of 
friendship between nations, " the only shuttles 
that can weave the delicate fabric of sympathy, 
comprehension, confidence, and mutual depend- 
ence in which we wish to clothe our policy of 
America for Americans " ; and he adjured Con- 
gress once more to consider a. measure providing 
for Government purchase or construction in default 
of better proposals, which he was still ready to 
consider if a case could be made for them. 

For the third time Congress settled down to 
the consideration of a Shipping Bill, the President 
giving much time in the early weeks of the year 
(19 1 6) to conferences with supporters and oppo- 



PREPAREDNESS AND PEACE 205 

nents of the measure in both Houses. The new 
measure differed from the old in that it included 
a proviso against the permanent institution of 
Government control. A Shipping Board was to 
be established, which could create a corporation 
with a capital not exceeding $50,000,000 for 
the purchase, construction, and operation of 
merchant ships as might be deemed advisable. 
The Government was, in the first instance, to hold 
not less than 51 per cent, of the stock, but its 
ownership of the vessels built or purchased was 
limited to a term not exceeding five years from 
the end of the European War. In that form the 
Bill was passed by the House of Representatives 
in June, and after a few v^'eeks in the Senate 
went to the President for signature at the end 
of August. The first members of the new 
Shipping Board were actually appointed in 
December. 

The final enactment of the fourth of the great 
preparedness measures — for the creation of the 
Federal Reserve Board with its district banks 
must be regarded as the first — marked the culmi- 
nation of a notable constructive achievement. 
Within three years credit throughout the Union 
had been placed on a new basis ; an efficient 
home defence Army had been organized ; the 
provision of American ships for the transport of 
American goods had been assured ; and the pro- 
tection of a Navy second to only one in the world 
guaranteed. And it was to a President elected 
pre-eminently on a programme of domestic reform 
that Americans owed their new sense of the 



2o6 PRESIDENT WILSON 

stability of their country in the commonwealth 
of nations. 

The sincerity of President Wilson's repeated 
declarations that the new strength with which his 
policy had invested the United States would never 
be used for purposes of aggression was questioned 
in neither hemisphere. But his jpurpose involved 
much more than mere abstention from aggres- 
sion. Armaments, he was satisfied, were an essen- 
tial safeguard through an indeterminate period 
of transition to more stable international relations, 
but he worked consistently and unremittingly for 
the creation of agreements, sanctions, and 
guarantees that should make the prospect of 
war progressively more remote. Towards that 
goal he moved along three lines. His endeavours 
for the elimination of the danger of war on 
the American continent have already been dis- 
cussed.' They were supplemented on a larg'er 
scale by the treaties concluded with a number 
of European and American Powers, agreeing that 
all disputes of every nature whatsoever not covered 
by existing arbitration treaties should be referred, 
in the event of other methods of settlement failing, 
to an international commission. ^ These agree- 
ments went far towards averting the danger of 
war so far as the United States itself was con- 
cerned, but President Wilson was not satisfied 
that their formulation constituted the maximum 
contribution of his country to the preservation 
of the peace of the world. The studies of his 
early life had been concerned with the constitu- 

' Chap. viii. p. 138, * Chap. riii. p. 152. 



PREPAREDNESS AND PEACE 207 

tions and relationships of nations, and he beUeved 
firmly in the possibility of an international court 
that should hold the scales — ^and if need be the 
sword — of justice between the nations, just as they 
were held by judicial systems between citizens 
of an individual State. 

That belief was not peculiar to Mr. Wilson. 
Thought both in America and in Great Britain was 
moving steadily in the same direction, and actual 
schemes were being worked out by men of weight 
and discernment in either country. In America 
constructive thinkers had evolved the conception 
of a League to Enforce Peace, its advocates 
including jurists of the experience and distinction 
of ex -President Taft and Mr. Elihu Root, Secre- 
tary of State in Mr. Roosevelt's second Adminis- 
tration. The proposals of the League included 
four main articles, providing — 

1 . That all justiciable questions on which no 
agreement was reached should be submitted to 
a judicial tribunal for hearing and judgtnent. 

2. That all other questions should be sub- 
mitted to a council of conciliation for hearing, 
consideration, and recommendation . 

3. That the signatory Powers should jointly 
take economic and military action against any 
of their number committing hostile acts against 
a co-signatory before the question in dispute had 
been submitted as provided ^.bove. 

4. That conferences should be held between 
the signatory Pov/ers to formulate and codify 
rules of interne tional law. 

Any critical student of such a statement can 



2o8 PRESIDENT WILSON 

find some point where he would desire amend- 
ments of detail,' and in giving his general assent 
to the scheme advanced by the League to Enforce 
Peace Mr. Wilson has never suggested that he 
commits himself to approval of every line of 
every clause. But he does find in the League's 
proposals a reasonable and practical basis, for 
constructive work for the preservation of peace, 
and he associated himself publicly with those pro- 
posals in a notable speech delivered at a dinner 
of the League at Washington in May 191 6. 

In the course of a declaration that attracted 
world-wide attention, the President pointed the 
diplomatic and political moral of the war then at 
its height, and laid down the doctrine that in the 
future the principle of public right must take 
precedence over the individual interests of par- 
ticular nations, and that the nations of the world 
must in some way band themselves together to 
see that right should prevail as against any sort of 
selfish aggression. " I am sure that I speak the 
mind and wish of the people of America," added 
Mr. Wilson, " when I say that the United States 
is willing to become a partner in any feasible 
association of nations formed in order to realize 
these objects and make them secure against viola- 
tion." His hopes were more clearly defined in 
a later passage of the same speech, in which he 
pictured " a universal association of all nations 
to maintain the inviolate security of the seas for 

' The principle of the League to Enforce Peace is fully and ably 
discussed in Mr. H. N. Brailsford's recen book, A League of 
Nations (Headley Bros., 5s. net). 



PREPAREDNESS AND PEACE 209 

the commerce and unhindered use of all the 
nations of the world, and to prevent any war 
begun either contrary to treaty covenants or with- 
out warning and full submission of the causes to 
the opinion of the world — a virtual guarantee of 
territorial integrity and political independence." 

Those words were not spoken to America alone. 
Confirmed as they were four months later in the 
President's speech of acceptance on his nomina- 
tion as Democratic candidate, they challenged, 
or at the least invited, response from the great 
nations of the world. The response was not 
lacking. In the course of the next few months 
the two recognized spokesmen of the opposing 
groups of belligerents, Viscount Grey and Dr. 
Bethmann-HoUweg, both made direct and public 
references to the American proposals. Viscount 
Grey, at a luncheon to representatives of the 
Foreign Press in London in October 19 16, spoke 
of the activities of the League to Enforce Peace 
as "a work in neutral countries to which we 
should all look with favour and with hope." On 
one of the League's proposals in particular the 
Foreign Secretary laid special stress, associating 
himself with the school of Mr. Wilson, rather 
than with that of Mr. Bryan, by his warning that 
" if the nations in the world after the war are 
to do something more effective than they have 
been able to do before to bind themselves together 
for the common object of peace, they must be 
prepared not to undertake more than they are 
prepared to uphold by force, and to see when 
the time of crisis comes that it is upheld by 

14 



2IO PRESIDENT WILSON 

force." Lord Grey's response to Mr. Wilsoa 
had a sequel less than three weeks later in the 
announcement by the German Imperial Chancellor 
that Germany was ready not merely to join, but 
to head, a union of peoples designed to restrain 
a disturber of the p>eace. 

Encouraged, it can hardly be questioned, by 
these endorsements of the principles of the League 
to Enforce Peace, the President dwelt in his so- 
called Peace Note to the belligerents in December 
1916 on "the measures to be taken to secure 
ihe future peace of the world," a matter in which, 
he declared, the people and Government of the 
United States were vitally and directly interested, 
and in which they were ready, and even eager, 
to co-operate when the war was over with every 
influence and resource at their command. That 
declaration, being" incidental rather than essential 
to the main purpose of Mr. Wilson's Note, might 
well have been passed over without specific refer- 
ence in the replies of the belligerents. It was 
therefore the more notable that both groups 
directly responded to the suggestion thus tenta- 
tively advanced, Germany professing herself pre- 
pared to collaborate fully after the end of the 
conflict then in progress in the exalted task the 
President had outlined, while the Allies declared 
that " they associate themselves whole-heartedly 
with the plan of creating a League of the Nations 
to ensure peace and justice throughout the world." 
What fruit those seeds of agreement will bear 
only the future can show. 

Mr. Wilson was not the originator of the 



PREPAREDNESS AND PEACE 211 

League to Enforce Peace, but his advocacy of 
its programme both in his Washington speech 
in May and in his Note to the belligterents in 
December 1 9 1 6 had the effect of commending the 
League's proposals to political thinkers the world 
over. The difficulties such a scheme would in- 
evitably have to meet cannot be considered here, 
except in one aspect that particularly concerns 
America. Critics of President Wilson and of the 
League to Enforce Peace have pointed out, and 
with undeniable force, that the participation of 
the United States in such a League of Nations 
would be fundamentally inconsistent both with 
the Monroe Doctrine and with the American 
Constitution . 

The Monroe Doctrine is certainly no fatal 
obstacle. That article of political faith is being 
progressively modified under the influence of 
changing circumstances, and it is destined to 
be modified further still. The Constitutional 
objection is more serious. Under the provisions 
of the Constitution the President has a free hand 
in all ordinary diplomatic negotiations, but he 
needs the concurrence of the Senate for the rati- 
fication of a treaty, while the declaration of w*a!r 
rests with Congress alone. How, then, could he 
pledge himself in advance to enter into the treaty 
relations on which the League's very existence 
would depend? And how could he guarantee the 
co-operation of the armed forces of the United 
States in the exercise of military pressure on a 
recalcitrant member of the League ? 

These are questions that must be seriously 



312 PRESIDENT WILSON 

faced, for America does not lightly relax her 
constitutional safeguards. They are not likely 
to form permanent or insuperable obstacles to 
the participation of the United States in a League 
of Nations. Americans have too strong a sense 
of their role as international mediators for that. 
But they may well provide American opponents 
of the League with the means of seriously delaying 
and obstructing the realization of its ideals. 



CHAPTER XI 
LABOUR AND SOCIAL REFORM 

It is time that property, as compared with humanity, should take 
second place, not first place. We must see to it that there is no 
overcrowding, that there is no bad sanitation, that there is no un- 
necessary spread of avoidable diseases, that the purity of food is 
safeguarded, that there is every precaution against accident, that 
women are not driven to impossible tasks, nor children permitted to 
spend their energy before it is fit to be spent. The hope and elasticity 
of the race must be preserved ; men must be preserved according to 
their individual needs, and not according to the programmes of in- 
dustry merely. What is the use of having industry, if we perish in 
producing it ? If we die in trying to feed ourselves, why should we 
eat ? If we die trying to get a foothold in the crowd, why not let the 
crowd trample us sooner and be done with it? — The New Freedom, 
chap. xi. 

Every quality in Mr. Wilson's character made 
him a social reformer. He was a social reformer 
as Governor of New Jersey, and he was elected 
President of the United States in 1 9 1 2 on a 
social reform programme. With organized labour 
he had temperamentally great sympathy, but down 
to his entry into New Jersey politics he had come 
into little actual contact with Labour as a political 
and social force. 

His attitude on Labour questions had been 
defined as far back as 19 10, when he was still 
President of Princeton, in a letter affirming that 
"it is not only perfectly legitimate, but abso- 
lutely necessary, that labour should organize if 



214 PRESIDENT WILSON 

it is to secure justice from organized capital, 
and everything that it does to improve the con- 
dition of working-men, to obtain legislation that 
will impose full legal responsibility upon the 
employer for his treatment of his employees and 
for their protection against accident, to secure 
just and adequate wages, and to put reasonable 
limits upon the working day and upon the exac- 
tions of those who employ labour, ought to have 
the hearty support of all fair-minded and public- 
spirited men." 

Mr. Wilson has not varied from that attitude 
during the years that have intervened ; but it is 
a much less simple matter to handle labour 
problems from the White House than from the 
State House at Trenton. All questions of factory 
laws, industrial disputes, wage rates, compensa- 
tion for accidents, and the like fall within the 
sphere of the State legislatures, not of the Federal 
Government. The only legislative power to be 
assumed by Congress is such as can be squared 
with clause 3 of section 8 of Article I of the 
Constitution, giving it authority " to regulate 
commerce with foreign nations, and among the 
several States, and with the Indian tribes." 

The words " among the several States " are 
driven hard. They at once bring every con- 
siderable railway under Federal regulation ; and 
while Congress can do nothing to influence con- 
ditions of employment in a factory doing business 
exclusively within its own State,' it gets some 

' This principle was definitely confirmed by the leading case U.S. 
sy. E. C. Knight, heard before the Supreme Court in 1895. 



LABOUR AND SOCIAL REFORM 215 

hold by prohibiting the transport of its goods 
in interstate commerce unless the conditions lof 
their manufacture have conformed to prescribed 
standards . Much of the work of the Supreme 
Court has consisted of deciding on the constitu- 
tionality of Federal laws challenged by the States 
as an encroachment on their rights. 

To that standing difficulty was added the fact 
that in America, as elsewhere, problems arising 
out of the European War absorbed time and 
attention which both Cabinet and Congress would 
have desired to devote to domestic legislation. 
In spite of that the Wilson Administration has 
carried through a striking list of measures bear- 
ing on social and industrial questions. And in 
almost every case the President's share in their 
initiation or successful passage has been large. 
His relations with Labour have not been uniformly 
smooth. As is usual in times of industrial pros- 
perity, there has been much industrial unrest, and 
one or two serious deadlocks, since Mr. Wilson's 
advent to power in 1 9 1 3 . The great textile 
strike, organized at Lawrence, in Massachusetts, 
by the Industrial Workers of the World (the un- 
skilled labourers' federation), fell in his prede- 
cessor's term of office ; but soon after his 
election there was a serious difficulty among the 
weavers at Paterson, in the President's own State 
of New Jersey, and in 1914 a grave outbreak 
took place at the Standard Oil Company's mines 
in Colorado. The issue was the recognition of 
union officials and the employment of non-union 
labour, and after a serious aflfray between the 



2i6 PRESIDENT WILSON 

strikers and the State militia, Mr. Wilson was 
compelled to draft Federal troops into the State. 
The dispute was finally settled by a Commission 
of Investigation, appointed by the President, when 
all other attempts at a settlement had failed. 

There was fortunately no other disturbance of 
the magnitude of the Colorado outbreak, though 
the railway troubles of 1916 threatened to put 
that and every other industrial conflict of recent 
times in the shade. Meanwhile President Wilson 
had been proving the sincerity of his promises 
of social legislation. Of the three great measures 
passed during his first year of office all had an 
indirect bearing on the welfare of Labour. The 
Federal Reserve Act by distributing credit stabi- 
lized trade, and therefore employment ; the 
Underwood Tariff Act lowered the price of staple 
commodities, like sugar, to the poor ; and the 
Clayton Anti -Trust Act in certain important par- 
ticulars constituted a charter for Labour com- 
parable to the Trade Disputes Act in Great 
Britain. 

The Clayton Act, which owed its passage into 
law to the pressure exerted personally by the 
President at a critical stage, expressly exempted 
labour unions from the veto on " combinations 
in restraint of trade." The unions had suffered 
much from the rulings of the courts. The 
Sherman Anti-Trust Law, of 1890, had not been 
aimed at Labour ; but decisions of the Supreme 
Court in 1908 and 191 1 had brought trade 
unions definitely under it. The clauses in the 
Clayton Act, legalizing peaceful strikes and boy- 



LABOUR AND SOCIAL REFORM 217 

cotts, were the response to urgent demands of 
Labour for relief from the impossible position 
in which the Sherman Act had placed it. The 
same measure severely limited the power of the 
courts to restrict the action of unions by injunc- 
tions prohibiting the continuance of practices 
forming the subject of an impending action. It 
was not without reason that Mr. Wilson sent the 
pen with which he signed the Act as a memento 
to Mr. Samuel Gompers^ the President of the 
American Federation of Labour. 

Labour legislation rarely enjoys a smootn 
passage. It almost invariably produces a clash 
of interests, and long after the law has been 
enacted and put in force opinion will still remain 
sharply divided as to its value. That was par- 
ticularly true of two measures passed by the 
Sixty-third and Sixty-fourth Congresses, the Sea- 
men's Act and the Adamson Railway Act. The 
Adamson Act must be considered later. The 
Seamen's Act, introduced by Senator La Follette, 
one of the founders of the Progressive Party, was 
dictated partly by alarm at the Titanic disaster, 
and partly by the demand of the seamen's unions 
for better conditions of service. The effect of 
the Act was to establish the sailor's right to at 
least half wages within forty -eight hours of 
making an American port, and to abolish arrests 
for desertion ; while it was laid down at the 
same time that after a specified interval 65 per 
cent, of the deck hands of any vessel calling 
at an American port must be able seamen, and 
75 per cent, of the crew must be able to under- 



2i8 PRESIDENT WILSON 

stand any order in the language in which it i« 
given. The Bill, which involved the denuncia- 
tion of treaties with more than twenty nations, 
was strongly opposed by the Republicans, and it 
was fully expected that the President would veto 
it, in view of the opposition at home and the 
irritation abroad. He decided, however, that the 
case was not one for opposing the decision of 
Congress. The passage of the Act was loudly 
applauded by the Seamen's Union. The hostility 
of foreign Governments to the measure iwould 
no doubt have been more vigorously expressed 
if the war had not intervened to thrust lesser 
concerns into the background. 

Two much less contentious measures, which 
owed their passage directly to the President's 
interest in their fortunes, were the Rural Credits 
Act and the Federal Child Labour Act. The 
Rural Credits Act, the purpose of which is suffi- 
ciently explained by its title, was the fulfilment 
of an old debt to the farmers. It had had a place 
in the Democratic platform of 1912, and Mr. 
Wilson had given it his strong personal support. 
The measure, more often known as the Federal 
Farm Loan Act, created a Federal Farm Loan 
Board and provided for the establishment of 
Federal Land Banks in twelve centres throughout 
the Union. The machinery bears a close re- 
semblance to that of the Federal Reserve Board, 
which had already done something to facilitate 
agricultural development. The Act, as President 
Wilson reminded the farmers in whose presence 
he set his signature to it, made the credit of the 



LABOUR AND SOCIAL REFORM 219 

L^nited States available to them and gave them 
the same facilities for raising loans as were always 
open to any city manufacturer and merchant with 
genuine assets to pledge. 

The Child Labour Act was the first measure 
of the kind passed by Congress. Social reforms 
such as it embodied had in the past been left 
to the individual States, and the power of the 
Federal Government to legislate for the whole 
Union on such a question was a matter of con- 
troversy. As it is, the constitutionality of the 
Child Labour Act is certain to be challeng'ed 
before the Supreme Court. The provisions of 
the Act are simple. It prohibits the shipment 
in inter-state commerce of goods emanating from 
factories employing children under fourteen, or 
under sixteen if employed at night or for more 
than eight hours a day. The measure had no 
easy passage. The first time it was introduced 
it was allowed to lapse. Brought in again in 
the following session, it would have met with no 
better fate but for Mr. Wilson's -determination that 
it should be saved. At the critical stage, when 
the approaching end of the session threatened 
a general disaster to all outstanding Bills, the 
President sent for the party leaders and urged 
them to insist on the passage of the Child Labour 
Act. His appeal was successful. The Senate 
passed the measure by 52 votes to 12, and it 
was signed on September i, 191 6. It was to 
come into operation twelve months later. 

It was left to the threatened railv/ay strike of 
191 6 to involve Mr. Wilson in the most decisive 



2 20 PRESIDENT WILSON 

action he ever took with regard to a Labour 
problem. This was not the President's first ex- 
perience of railway trouble. Within a few months 
after his election in 191 3 a strike seemed im- 
pending, the then existing arbitration machinery 
— a Commission of three created by the Erdman 
Act of 1898 — satisfying neither side in the 
dispute, since each party feared that a single vote 
might deprive them of an award involving some 
millions of dollars. In this case prompt legis- 
lative action was taken. A Bill, acceptable to 
both employers and employed, providing for the 
increase of the Arbitration Board to six, was 
rushed through Congress and signed by the Presi- 
dent. On the basis thus provided the dispute 
was settled without open hostilities. 

The 191 6 trouble was much more formidable. 
It involved the skilled men of every railway 
system in the United States. The men were 
represented by four railway brotherhoods ' (trade 
unions), their actual number being less than 
400,000, distributed over some 230 railways, 
from Philadelphia to San Francisco and from 
Detroit to New Orleans. Moderate as these 
numbers were, the threatened strike would have 
paralysed the railway service of the whole of 
the Union, for the prospective strikers were the 
skilled men— engineers, firemen, conductors, 
brakemen — on whom the actual train -running 
depended, and they were backed by the promised 
support of the American Federation of Labour. 
Stripped of certain technicalities, their demand 

- Locomotive engineers, locomotive firemen, conductors, trainmen. 



LABOUR AND SOCIAL REFORM 221 

was for an eight -hour day (instead of the usual 
nine or ten\ without reduction of wages and 
with payment at time and a half for overtime. 
In the words of a poster issued broadcast through- 
out the country, they asked for " a square deal — 
eight hours' work, eight hours' sleep, eight 
hours' relaxation." The case for the companies 
was that the men's demands were unreasonable, 
and that to concede them would mean so 
heavy an addition to working costs as to neces- 
sitate the raising of rates, a step which the 
railroads were not empowered to take without 
the sanction of the Inter-State Commerce Com- 
mission . 

The men refused arbitration and definitely 
called a strike, to take effect on the first Monday 
in September if their demands had not been met 
by that date. The Monday in question was the 
fourth of the month . A week earlier there was 
no sign of a settlement. The railroads were 
refusing all goods for future transport, and pre- 
parations were being made to have the mail trains 
worked by the military. A heavy responsibility 
rested on the President as Chief Executive. The 
deadlock was complete. Every possible opening 
for intervention had disappeared. Unless the men 
got what they asked for the train services would 
stop dead in seven days' time. Mr. Wilson was 
not predisposed to condemn the brotherhoods as 
imreasonable. He was a believer in the limita- 
tion of hours, and a Bill fixing an eight-hour 
day for Federal employees had recently been 
passed with his approval . But to rush through 



222 PRESIDENT WILSON 

legislation conferring on the men by statute satis- 
faction of demands they had refused to submit 
to arbitration was a serious step, which could 
not fail to expose its author to violent attack. 

But it was a choice between that and a national 
strike. The President was faced with an extra- 
ordinarily difficult decision, and he decided for 
legislation. On Tuesday, August 29th, he went 
down to Congress and appealed for the immediate 
passage of a Bill whose provisions he outlined. 
It consisted of six clauses, enacting — 

1 . That the Inter-State Commerce Commission 
(which regulates railways) should be reconstituted 

and strengthened. 

2. That the eight-hour day should be estab- 
lished as the legal basis of work and wages. 

3. That a Commission of three should be 
appointed to watch the working of the Act and 
report . 

4. That the companies should be permitted to 
raise rates if the Inter -State Commerce Com- 
mission decided that the increased costs imposed 
by the new Act justified it. 

5 . That a strike or lock-out should be illegal 
until a public investigation had been made into 
the dispute. 

6. That in case of military necessity the Presi- 
dent should have power to seize and work the 
railways, putting the railwaymen under military 
discipline. 

The lengthy address by which these proposals 
were prefaced provoked much criticism ; for the 
President contrived to put the masters, rather than 



LABOUR AND SOCIAL REFORM 223 

the men, in the wrong, on the ground that they 
had definitely rejected his plan of settlement, 
which involved just compensation in return for 
the concession of the eight-hour day. But the 
urgency of the situation demanded action rather 
than criticism. Congress, warned that starva- 
tion was among the possibilities, applied itself 
forthwith to its task. There was some argu- 
ment as to the precise form and extent of 
the Bills to be passed ; but on Thursday, 
August 31st, it was announced that the President 
and the leaders in the two Houses had accepted 
as a compromise the measure standing in the 
name of Mr. Adamson, of Georgia, for intro- 
duction in the House. The Bill established the 
eight -hour day, with overtime pro rata (not at 
time and a half), appointed the Commission of 
three to observe and report, and provided for 
the military operation of the roads in case of 
need. The new provisions were to have force 
as from January i, 191 7. The Bill was intro- 
duced on Thursday, passed by the House on 
Friday and by the Senate on Saturday, and was 
signed by the President on Sunday. On Monday, 
the day fixed for the great strike, work every- 
where went on as usual. The rest of the Presi- 
dent's programme was held over till the following 
session. 

The settlement gratified the railwaymen and 
satisfied the President, and while Mr. Wilson was 
bitterly assailed for yielding to industrial menace, 
relief at the escape from the strike was clearly 
the predominant feeling in the mind of the 



2 24 PRESIDENT WILSON 

average citizen. No one, however, supposed that 
the companies would accept the decision without 
a fight. Their obvious strategy was to challenge 
the Act as unconstitutional, and a number of 
railroads at once filed injunction suits to suspend 
its operation. On November 22nd the Federal 
District Court at Kansas City decided, on the 
application of the Missouri, Oklahoma, Gulf Rail- 
road, that the Law was unconstitutional. An in- 
junction was issued pending a final judgment on 
the issue by the Supreme Court. At the time 
this chapter was being written (February 191 7) 
that decision had not been given and the Law 
was not in operation. 

Public opinion on the President's action has 
not yet finally crystallized, nor is it likely to 
until the decision of the Inter-State Commerce 
Commission on the raising of freight rates is 
made known. If the Law should be declared 
constitutional and should indirectly mean a levy 
on the pocket of the private citizen, it will not 
be viewed with quite the detachment that was 
possible while the dispute was pending. The 
men, on their side, are strongly opposed to the 
measure of what is virtually compulsory arbitra- 
tion associated by the President with his pro- 
posal to make the eight -hour day statutory. The 
railway future therefore remains uncertain, the 
more so as the Newlands Commission, appointed 
to investigate and report on the working of rail- 
way systems the world over, must obviously bring 
the question of nationalization into the field of 
practical discussion. /vmerica is hardly pre- 



LABOUR AND SOCIAL REFORM 225 

pared yet for a change involving a centralization 
of power that would affect the whole relationship 
of the States to the Union, but merely to have 
nationalization discussed as a serious proposition 
will be a portent of interest. 

Presenting himself for re-election within nine 
weeks of his settlement of the railroad dispute, 
Mr. Wilson commanded a substantial section of 
the Labour vote that would otherwise have gone 
to the Socialist candidate. In his speech of 
acceptance at the beginning of September he 
had given evidence of his solicitude for Labour 
in a passage recalling the legislation he had 
initiated or furthered. 

" The working-men of America," he claimed, 
" have been given a veritable emancipation by 
the legal recognition of a man's labour as part 
of his life, and not a mere marketable com- 
modity ; by exempting labour organizations from 
processes of the Courts which treated their mem- 
bers like fractional mobs and not like accessible 
and responsible individuals ; by releasing our 
seamen from involuntary servitude ; by making 
adequate provision for compensation for indus- 
trial accidents ; by providing suitable machinery 
for mediation and conciliation in industrial dis- 
putes ; and by putting the Federal Department 
of Labour at the disposal of the working-man 
when in search of work." To this list of services 
would, of course, have been added the eight- 
hour day victory, but for the fact that on 
the day the President's speech was being 
delivered the measure conferring that benefit 

IS 



226 PRESIDENT WILSON 

was still in course of passage through the 
Senate. 

On the whole, Labour recognized the justice 
of President Wilson's claims. The union clauses 
in the Clayton Act they regarded as a vindication 
of the principle that " the labour of a human 
being is not a commodity or article of commerce " 
— and may therefore be legitimately withheld 
through the action of a combination when a 
commodity or article of commerce may not. Mr. 
Gompers, the President of the A.F.L., no doubt 
carried most of his membership with him when 
he wrote on the eve of the 191 6 election : " Presi- 
dent Woodrow Wilson has advocated, urged, and 
signed legislation protecting human rights and 
promoting the welfare of the workers and all of 
the masses of the people. It lies with the working 
people — the masses — on Election Day to deter- 
mine by their votes whether the policy of progress, 
justice, freedom, and humanity shall prevail in 
the re-election of Mr. Wilson to the Presidency 
of the United States, or whether the pendulum 
shall swing backward, and the policy of reaction 
shall be enthroned." i 

It does not appear that the Labour vote was 
in most areas cast solid for the President, but 
it may well have been responsible for giving' him 
the victory in more than one doubtful State. 

' American Federation! st, November 1916. 



CHAiPTER XII 
RE-ELECTION 

Four years is too long a term for a President who is not a true 
spokesman of the people, who is imposed upon and does not lead. 
It is too short a term for a President who is doing or attempting a 
great work of reform and who has not had time to finish it.— Letter to 
Congressman A. I\I. Palmer, February 191 3. 

From the end of 191 5, when political thought 
began seriously to concern itself with the Presi- 
dential Election of the following November, down 
to the actual day of assembly of the Progressive 
and Republican Conventions at Chicago in June, 
a curious and baffling situation prevailed. On 
the Democratic side, indeed, there was neither 
division nor doubt. Only one candidate was 
possible, Woodrow Wilson, and the 191 2 pro- 
nouncement in favour of a single Presidential 
term was by tacit agreement thrown to the winds. 
But with the opposition the case was very dif- 
ferent. They did not know whether they were 
one party or two, and even if they should decide 
to be one they were completely at a loss for a 
candidate. 

Half a dozen names were under discussion^ 
the mention of any one of them calculated to 
provoke more criticism than approval. Mr. 
Roosevelt was an obvious nomination, but public 

2i7 



228 PRESIDENT WILSON 

opinion was altogether against election for a third 
term, and in any case the Progressive leader's 
rampant radicalism would render his hold on the 
" old guard " of the Republican Party precarious. 
Senator Elihu Root commanded universal respect, 
but he was too conservative for many of the Pro- 
gressives, and it was doubtful in the extreme 
whether he was ready to accept nomination at 
seventy-one. On the whole, the omens pointed to 
the adoption of a compromise candidate in Mr. 
Charles Evans Hughes, one of the nine judges of 
the Supreme Court, and a former Governor of 
New York State ; but here again it was question- 
able whether Mr. Hughes was prepared to relin- 
quish the dignity and distinction of his high 
judicial office, and whether, if he did, he would 
make an effective fighting candidate. In addition 
attention was spasmodically concentrated on the 
claims of such " favourite son " candidates as 
Senator Cummins of Iowa, Senator Borah of 
Idaho, and ex -Senator Fairbanks of Indiana, 
Vice-President in Mr. Roosevelt's second 
administration. 

The importance of the Republican dilemma lay 
in the certainty that the presence of both a Pro- 
gressive and a Republican candidate in the field 
would, in 1 9 1 6 as in 1 9 1 2, mean the gift of the 
election to Mr. Wilson. On the other hand, in 
the event of a Progressive-Republican coalition 
the President would have to do much more than 
maintain his position. In 19 12 his total was 
1,300,000 behind the combined polls of Mr. 
Roosevelt and Mr. Taft, and if in 1216 he should 



RE-ELECTION 229 

be facing one opponent instead of two he would 
need to make up the leeway of a million and a 
third either by securing that majority among the 
new voters, largely women, added to the electorate 
in the preceding four years, or by detaching 
sufficient votes from the Opposition to reduce their 
total and increase his own to the necessary level. 
It is not surprising that the President's chances 
of re-election were generally assumed to turn on 
whether the cleavage in the Republican Party was 
to disappear or be perpetuated. In a straight fight 
the odds were against Mr. Wilson. 

The first five months of 19 16 passed with the 
Republican riddle still unsolved. When the Pro- 
gressive and Republican Conventions, opening at 
Chicago on June 7th, were no more than a week 
distant the more sagacious prophets were pre- 
dicting that Roosevelt would be nominated by 
the former and Hughes by the latter, though 
whether Hughes would consent to stand was 
altogether problematic. The first day of the 
Conventions brought no developments. On the 
second an important step was taken, five Progres- 
sives meeting with five Republicans to probe the 
possibilities of an accommodation. On the fourth 
Judge Hughes was nominated by the Republicans, 
and his acceptance was at once cabled from 
Washington. He resigned his seat in the Supreme 
Court on the same day. Mr. Roosevelt, nomi- 
nated simultaneously by the Prog'ressives, indi- 
cated that his acceptance would depend on the 
opinion he formed of Mr. Hughes's declarations. 
The Republican candidate having stated his posi- 



230 PRESIDENT WILSON 

tion, the ex -President decided that rather than 
make Mr. Wilson's re-election certain he would 
stand aside himself and throw his weight on the 
side of Judge Hughes. 

The interest of the Democratic Convention at 
St. Louis a fortnight later lay not in the choice 
of a candidate, for that was a foregone conclu- 
sion, but in the formulation of a platform. The 
documents representing the views of the Republi- 
cans and the Progressives had been unimpressive, 
both demanding high Protection, both insisting 
on the vindication of American honour and 
interests, and both calhng for extensive prepared- 
ness programmes, the Progressives committing 
themselves to the advocacy of universal military 
service. The Democratic platform, in the drafting 
of which Mr. Wilson had taken a prominent part, 
consisted largely of a record of the notable 
achievements of the Administration in power. It 
reaffirmed the belief of the party in a revenue 
tariff ; made an outspoken appeal to American 
citizens of whatever origin to recognize the para- 
mount claims of their American nationality ; 
pledged the support of the party to the prepared- 
ness and Pan-American policies of the Adminis- 
tration ; approved the Shipping Bill then before 
Congress ; advocated the introduction of woman 
suffrage by the individual States ; and recom- 
mended various measures of social reform. 

The platform opened with the declaration that 
" we endorse the administration of Woodrow 
Wilson," and ended with the affirmation that 
" Woodrow Wilson stands to-day the greatest 



RE-ELECTION '231 

American of his generation." That was the real 
plank on which the Democratic Party fouglit 
the election. Throughout the Union they 
placarded the legend, " Let us keep this 
proven man." No better war-cry could have 
been devised. An outgoing President presenting 
himself for re-election must stand primarily on 
his record, and in 19 16 Mr. Wilson's personaHty, 
as revealed by his legislative and administrative 
achievement, was the supreme — it might almost 
be said the single — campaign asset of the party 
that had nominated him for a second term. The 
times forbade the introduction of new and ambi- 
tious domestic programmes. Moreover, most of 
the standing demands of the Democrats had 
already been realized, at least in part, during 
the quadrennium then drawing* to a close. All 
they asked was that Woodrow Wilson should con- 
tinue to lead. They were prepared, not in blind 
but in assured confidence^ to follow. 

In the four and a half months of organizing and 
oratory that intervened between the nominations 
in June and the elections in November the attitude 
of America towards the European War was inevit- 
ably the main subject of contention. It did not 
overshadow all other issues as completely as was 
sometimes supposed in this country, but it pro- 
vided the Republicans with their main weapon of 
attack, and for that reason it was given a greater 
prominence in the campaign speeches than it 
assumed in the mind of the average voter in any 
except the Eastern States. New England, always 
Republican, was strongly opposed to what it 



232 PRESIDENT WILSON 

regarded as the President's nerveless handling of 
the controversies with both groups of belligerents 
— particularly with Germany. But throughout the 
West and South and a great part of the Middle 
West there was a general endorsement of the 
appreciation accorded in the Democratic platform 
to " the splendid diplomatic victories of our great 
President, who has preserved the vital interests of 
our Government and its citizens, and kept us out 
of war." The nature of the pacific idealism of 
the West has already been briefly touched on,' and 
it is sufficient to say here that the watchword 
Peace and Prosperity, with its variant Peace, Pre- 
paredness, and Prosperity, was calculated to secure 
the Democratic candidate many thousands of votes 
throughout wide areas west of the Mississippi. 

The campaign was devoid of conspicuous inci- 
dents. From the first moment to the last the issue 
completely baffled the prophets. Much turned 
on whether the German vote would be cast solid, 
and if so which candidate would get it. At first 
Mr. Hughes was distinctly in favour with the 
hyphenates, partly from their natural disposition to 
oppose the man whom they regarded as backing' 
the Allies against Germany, partly as a result of 
the President's unsparing flagellation of so-called 
American citizens of divided allegiance, who put 
the interests of the country of their origin before 
the interests of the country to which their loyalty 
had been pledged. For a while Mr. Hughes, 
notably in a speech at the German centre of 
Milwaukee, appeared to be cultivating such sup.- 
» Chap, ix, p. 157. 



RE-ELECTION 233 

port, but it soon became an embarrassment to 
him, and he took an early opportunity of defining 
his position by some uncompromising strictures 
on qualified and divided loyalty. 

As the campaign progressed the old party 
alignments, obliterated by the Progressive split 
in 191 2, took clearer shape. Mr. Roosevelt, after 
a rather spectacular reconcihation with his former 
opponent Mr. Taft, took the field in active support 
of Mr. Hughes. On the other side Mr. Bryan, 
whose influence with the radical and pacifist wing 
of the Democratic Party was great, had at the 
outset pledged his unreserved support to the Presi- 
dent, and the Democratic candidate's prospects 
were further improved towards the close of the 
campaign by the unexpected backing of Mr. Henry 
Ford, the pacifist and Republican motor-manu- 
facturer of Detroit, Mr. Thomas Edison, and the 
influential, but so far non-committal, New York 
Evening Post, The main line of Republican 
attack was a fierce condemnation of the alleged 
failure of the President to protect American 
honour and interests ; but Mr. Hughes showed 
himself singularly destitute of any practical alter- 
native policy, a defect that unquestionably, lost 
him the support of thousands of electors disposed 
to vote Republican but unprepared for a leap in 
the dark in a crisis so menacing. 

The quality of Mr. Wilson's patriotism, more- 
over, was above challenge. He refused from 
the first to truckle to the pro -German element, 
and his position was considerably strengthened by 
an incident that occurred just a month before the 



234 PRESIDENT WILSON 

election. A body, of pro -German procliviries, 
known as the American Truth Society, sent him 
through its president, Mr. Jeremiah O'Leary, a 
telegram worded as follows : — 

Again we greet you with popular disapproval of your pro-British 
policies. Your failure to secure compliance with all American rights, 
your leniency towards the British Empire, your approval of war 
loans and ammunition traffic, are the issues of this campaign. 

The President immediately telegraphed back 
from his home at Long Branch ' : — 

Your telegram received. Would feel deeply mortified to have you, 
or anybody like you, voting for me. Since you have access to many 
disloyal Americans, and I have not, I will ask you to convey this 
message to them. — Woodrow Wilson. 

The interchange was received with general satis- 
faction throughout America. 

The beginning of November found the political 
pundits completely at sea. Never in the history 
of the Union had the issue seemed so incalculable. 
Certain early omens, it is true, had been unfavour- 
able to Mr. Wilson. Maine, which holds its State 
elections apart from, and in advance of, the Presi- 
dential contest, had in September shown itself 
true to its traditional Republicanism. In the 
New York primaries in the same month the Pro- 
gressives, for whose support the Democrats had 
been angling, went back to the Republican fold ; 
while in the President's own State of New Jersey 
there was a Democratic split, and an anti -Wilson 
candidate secured nomination at the primary for 

' See map opposite p. 43. 



R^-ELECTION 235 

the United States Senatorship, Nevertheless, Wall 
Street betting, which early in the campaign had 
been 2 to i on Hughes, had backed down by 
the last week in October to 10 to 9, and on the 
eve of the poll varied between 10 to 7 and 10 
to 8 on the Republican candidate. 

The President's chances of success rested on 
too many unknown factors for confident predic- 
tion. How far would he detach Progressive votes 
from Hughes ? Or Socialist votes from Benson 
(the oflficial Socialist) ? Would he carry the 
Middle West ? How would the four million 
women vote — for the Democratic candidate who 
advocated extension of the franchise to them by 
State ordinance, or for the Republican who boldly 
recommended an amendment of the Federal Con- 
stitution conferring the vote on women at a stroke 
throughout the forty -eight States ? 

With those, and many other similar questions 
unanswered and unanswerable, the electors went 
to the poll on November 7th. The quarters 
where the earliest foreshadowings of the result 
were to be sought were well known. Pennsyl- 
vania, with its 38 electoral votes, was a certainty 
for Hughes. Its great steel industry lived on 
high Protection, and the State had never gone 
Democratic since the Civil War. If to Pennsyl- 
vania's 38 should be added New York's 45, Mr. 
Wilson's handicap would be heavy, even with the 
certainty that the South and the probability that 
much of the West would be with him. Illinois 
with its 29 votes was regarded as the pivotal 
State. If the Democrats could carry that they 



236 PRESIDENT WILSON 

would have some set-off against their certain 
defeat in the East. If, on the other hand, Wilson 
lost Pennsylvania, New York, and Illinois the 
election was as good as over. No candidate in 
the history of the Union had ever won against 
the combination of those three predominant States. 
By the early evening unofficial reports from 
the different States were reaching New York. 
It was soon clear that Pennsylvania was Repub- 
lican. By seven o'clock the Democratic New 
York Times had conceded New York to Mr. 
Hughes. By 7.30 the Herald had prematurely 
announced Mr. Hughes's election. An hour later 
the American did the same. The Illinois returns 
were still lacking, but a Republican majority was 
rumoured. By nine o'clock the Democratic World 
and the Republican Tribune had taken Mr. 
Hughes's victory for granted. By 9.30 the Times 
had hoisted the red light that was the pre- 
arranged signal of a Republican victory. It kept 
it burning till midnight, and announced the next 
morning in giant headlines across its front page — 

HUGHES ELECTED WITH 290 VOTES, 

PERHAPS 312, 7 STATES IN DOUBT; 

HOUSE REPUBLICAN. 

In this country there w^as, of course, no over- 
night excitement, for New York time is five hours 
behind Greenwich, and the earliest definite news 
could not reach London till after midnight. For 
the same reason the ordinary editions of the 
morning papers on the following day could report 



RE-ELECTION 237^ 

no conclusive result, but The Times ran a special 
late edition bearing on its principal page thie 
followdng inset : — 



Mr. Hugl 
the United 


STOP 


PRESS 


Printing House Square, E.C. 

Nov. 8, 5.30 a.m. 

es has been elected President of 
States. 



The rest of the late morning papers made the 
same announcement. 

The lirst editions of the evening papers pub- 
lished biographies of the successful Republican 
candidate, but before the afternoon was far 
advanced they were issuing posters bearing such 
legends as " American Election : Remarkable 
Development " ; or " Is Hughes Elected? Issue 
in Doubt." By the following morning, November 
9th, it was clear that it was anybody's election. 
So close had been the voting in a number of States 
that so far from the result being certain, as it 
regularly was, within three or four hours of the 
close of the polls, no finality had been reached 
after more than a night and a day had elapsed. 
So far as could be ascertained Mr. Wilson was 
to be credited with 251 electoral votes and Mr. 
Hughes with 242, Since the total vote was 
531 a candidate must secure at least 266 to be 
elected. , . 



238 PRESIDENT WILSON 

Another day passed and the figures were put 
at 269 and 247, Mr. Wilson, on this showing', 
being elected with at least three votes to spare. 
This cornputation, however, was quite unofficial, 
and all that could be said with any assurance 
was that the final result would turn on California 
and Minnesota, where the voting was so close 
that a recount might be necessary in either State. 
California had 13 electoral votes, Minnesota 12. 
If Mr. Wilson could carry either of the two he 
was safe. Mr. Hughes would need them both 
to secure election. In the end they went different 
roads, California returning a Democratic majority 
of 3,700 on a poll of over 900,000, and Minnesota 
a Republican majority of less than 500 on a poll 
of close on 360,000. It was not till November 
23rd, sixteen days after the actual polling, that 
the Republicans finally abandoned hope, and Mr. 
Hughes telegraphed to congratulate the President 
on having won an election unprecedented in the 
history of the United States. 

The official totals of electoral votes were : — 

Wilson 276 

Hughes 255 

The President therefore had secured ten votes 
above a bare majority. He was the first Demo- 
cratic President since Andrew Jackson (1829-37) 
to be elected for a second consecutive term, for 
Cleveland, though he was twice President 
(1885-9 and 1893-7) did not hold office for 
eight years continuously. On the popular vote 
Mr. Wilson held a lead of over half a million, 



RE-ELECTION 239 

the totals of each of the five candidates being 
as follows : — 



Wilson (Dem.) 
Hughes (Rep.) 
Benson (Soc.) ... 
Hanly (Prohib.) 
Reimer (Soc.-Lab.) 



9,116,296 

8,547,474 
750,000 ' 
225,101 
10,105 



Mr. Wilson's vote was the highest ever recorded 
by a Democratic candidate, being 2,800,000 
above his own total in 19 12, and Mr. Hughes's 
the highest ever recorded by a Republican, That 
is to be accounted for by the growth of the 
population and the admission of women to the 
franchise in several States that excluded them 
in 1 91 2. In all there were over 2 2 n^iiHion 
more votes cast in 19 16 than at the previous 
election. 

The result of the polling was hardly easier to 
explain than it had been to predict, but a study 
of the map (opposite p. 227) makes it clear where, 
if not why, Mr. Wilson won. New England, 
with the exception of New Hampshire f (which 
went Democrat by a majority of 56 out of 
87,000), was solid for Hughes. The South sent 
its usual unbroken phalanx of Democratic voters 
to the electoral college. The Middle West States 
of Minnesota, Iowa, Illinois, Indiana, Wisconsin 
all returned Republican majorities. Nothing but 
a practically solid Democratic vote in the West 
could have set off that heavy preponderance. The 
West turned the election. Its returns exceeded 
the Democrats' highest expectations. Except for 

' Figures for certain States estimated. 



240 PRESIDENT WILSON 

Oregon and South Dakota (five votes each), 
every State from the Pacific Ocean to the Missouri 
had lined up behind Mr. Wilson. The West 
had combined with the South to send him back 
to the White House in the face of the East. 
And incidentally the President had achieved the 
unexampled feat of winning against the adverse 
verdict of New York, Pennsylvania, and Illinois, 
which contribute between them no fewer than 112 
votes . 

While no one State was actually more 
■-pivotal" than any other, it was a curious 
irony that thrust on California the appearance of 
having turned the election. For California -was 
the scene of a Republican faux p^s that may 
justly be said to have cost Mr. Hughes the Presi- 
dency, The State was Republican by tradition. 
It had four times split its vote, but it had never 
since the Civil War gone solid for the Democrats. 
In 191 2 it was Progressive, with a small split. 
In 1 9 1 6 it should have been secure for the 
Republicans. But California was not prepared 
to discard its radicalism. It had cast up a 
political leader, Hiram Johnson, a strong Pro- 
gressive, of whom more will be heard at 
Washington — certainly at the Capitol, it may even 
be at the White House — in no remote future. 
He had accepted nomination to the Governorship 
unwillingly, fought and beaten the party machine, 
broken the power of the railroad that dominated 
State politics, and then proceeded to purge 
California as Woodrow Wilson in his time had 
purged New Jersey. 



RE-ELECTION 241 

In 19 1 6 Governor Johnson, who was himself 
standing for the United States Senate, was pre- 
pared, on the smallest encouragement, to follow 
the example of his leader Mr. Roosevelt and 
support the Republican candidate. Unfortunately 
for the Republican candidate that encouragement 
was never given. When Mr. Hughes visited 
California he accepted the ill -conceived advice 
of a political agent, ignored Mr. Johnson, and 
took inordinate pains to make it clear that he 
was standing as a true-blue Republican, with no 
compromising strain of Progressivism in his 
political faith. That declaration lost him the 
thirteen California votes that would have made 
him President of the United States. Hiram 
Johnson and his friends were radicals and 
Republicans. They had a choice between .sup- 
porting a radical and Democrat on the one hand 
and a conservative and Republican on the other. 
They preferred the radical and Democrat. 
Governor Johnson himself beat his Democratic 
opponent out of the field for the Senatorship, 
but the State's Presidential vote went to Wilson. 

Few conclusive inferences can be drawn from 
an election so closely contested. It is clear that 
all the speculations on the effect of the women's 
vote and the hyphenated vote were superfluous. 
The women voted one way in one State and the 
opposite way in another. The hyphenated 
electors did the same. The Progressives 
evidently voted Republican in the Eastern 
States, but in the West they must have given 
considerable support to Mr. Wilson. There is 

16 



2:42 PRESIDENT WILSON 

some evidence of a transference of votes^ as com- 
pared with 191 2, from the Socialist to the 
Democratic candidate. 

The one broad moral to be drawn is that while 
America would have been quite content to see 
Mr. Hughes at the White House, she preferred 
on the whole that Mr. Wilson should remain in 
possession. His conduct of affairs might be 
open to criticism at different points, but at any 
rate he had steered the country through perilous 
seas without the shipwreck of either its honour 
or its prosperity. Was it certain that Mr. Hughes 
could do as much ? The West, at least, was 
disinclined to take risks on that. The crisis, 
moreover, was still at its heigkt, and the old 
1864 dictum about swapping horses in the middle 
of a stream was peculiarly applicable to 1916. 
And to that was added the reflection, probably 
much more widespread than appeared on the 
surface, that if war had to come it was well 
that America should go into it under a leader 
who hated war and could be relied on to take 
up arms only under irresistible compulsion. If 
the secrets of individual votes could be revealed, 
it is not unlikely that Mr. Wilson would be found 
to owe his election to Republicans who shrank 
at the eleventh hour from the responsibility of 
committing the destinies of America at so critical 
a moinent to untried hands. 

It should be added that the elections reduced 
the Democratic majority in the Senate from 16 
to 1 2, and left the balance in the House in the 
hands of h^li a dozen Progressives, Independents, 



RE-ELECTION 243 

and Prohibitionists. Votes were cast in several 
States on the prohibition question, with the result 
that Michigan, Montana, Nebraska, and South 
Dakota ''went dry." Their accession raised the 
number of dry States to 25 out of 48. 



' CHAPTER XIII 

THE FUTURE 

The destiny of America lies written in the hnes oi poets, in the 
characters of self-sacrificing soldiers, in the conceptions of ambitions 
of her greater statesmen, lies written in the teachings of her school- 
rooms, in all those ideals of service of humanity and of liberty for the 
individual, which are to be found written in the very school-books 
of the boys and girls whom we send to be taught to be Americans. 
The destiny of America is an ideal destiny. America has no reason 
for being, unless her destiny and duty be ideal. It is her incumbent 
privilege to declare and stand for the rights of men. Nothing else 
is worth fighting for. Nothing else is worth sacrificing for. — Ai 
Chicago, January 31, 1916. 

To make a chapter under this heading anything 
but brief and tentative would be to court disaster. 
The prophet's is at all times a thankless role, and 
a,t a moment like the present, when external events 
over which America can have no control may sud- 
denly involve her in war, or betray her President 
into some fundamental error of judgment that 
would shatter in a week the high reputation he 
has built up through four laborious years, any, 
attempt at confident prediction would be a double 
folly. Nevertheless there are discernible in 
American political life certain drifts and tenden- 
cies of which it is well to take account, even 
though there can be no certainty that expecta- 
tions legitimately founded on them will ever be 

realized. , , 

244 



THE FUTURE I245 

First, as to Mr. Wilson himself. It is not to 
be supposed that the deep-rooted sentiment 
against a third Presidential term will be relaxed 
in his favour when his second quadrennium has 
been served. March 1921, therefore, will find 
him at the age of sixty -four, ,and, if present 
indications are any guide, with many years of 
vigour and activity still before him, an ex-Presi- 
dent of the United States. Americans admit 
frankly that their ex -Presidents are an embar- 
rassment. A man who has exercised more auto- 
cratic powers than a constitutional monarch ever 
wields over a population now approaching a 
hundred millions cannot quietly disappear when 
he leaves the White House. It is not consistent 
with his dignity to fight a contested election for 
the Senate. As a member of the Cabinet he 
would tend to limit the President's freedom of 
action. He may be prepared and qualified to 
assume the rdle of Elder Statesman, like Jeffer- 
son in his retirement at Monticello ; but there is 
always an equal prospect that he will become, 
like Mr. Roosevelt, a permanent thorn in the side 
of successors of whichever party. 

Mr. Wilson is not likely to emulate the Pro- 
gressive leader's achievements as critic and 
pamphleteer. It is more likely that he will follow 
Mr. Taft's sensible and honourable example and 
go back to the academic work to which he 
worthily devoted his abilities down to 19 10. But 
there is one alternative on which an English 
writer may be permitted to dwell with an 
emphasis dictated by hope. There is no living 



■246 PRESIDENT WILSON 

American who could fill with greater distinction 
or success the office of Ambassador to Great 
Britain, and none whose appointment would be 
read as a greater honour to the country to which 
he was accredited. Nor would it be beneath the 
dignity even of an ex-President of the United 
States to come to London, not as a mere diplo- 
matic plenipotentiary, but as Ambassador to a 
people as well as to a chancellery, as the architect 
of a spiritual entente, charged with interpreting 
America to England and England to America as 
they have been interpreted in the past by James 
Russell Lowell on the one side and James Bryce 
on the other. The world may be a different place 
in four years' time, and it may well appear that 
the highest task to which a statesmari can bend 
his energies in the third decade of the twentieth 
century will be the promotion and consolidation 
of Anglo-American friendship. 

But before that question need be seriously con- 
sidered Mr. Wilson has four years of power in 
prospect. His personal position has been 
materially strengthened by his re-election. Lie 
is still technically a minority President, for when 
all five candidates' votes in 191 6 are taken into 
account Mr. Wilson polled a few hundred 
thousand less than the combined totals of his 
opponents. But for practical purposes all that 
need be considered are the Democratic, Repub- 
lican, and Progressive candidates in 191 2 and 
the Democratic and Republican in 19 16. And 
in relation to the Republican-Progressives Presi- 
cient Wilson^ after four years of unprecedented 



THE FUTURE -2747 

industry and unexampled anxiety, during which his 
domestic and internal policies challenged criticism 
at every point and from every quarter, converted 
a minority of 1,300,000 votes into a majority 
of 560,000, That vindication of his adminis- 
tration, coupled with the fact that he is no longer 
living under the shadow of an impending election, 
has sensibly increased the President's freedom 
of action. On the other hand, his hold on Con- 
gress is less secure, for while in the Sixty-fifth 
Congress the Senate still has a Democratic 
majority of 12 (as against 16 in the Sixty -fourth) 
the parties in the House are so evenly divided 
that a handful of Independents is likely to hold 
the balance. 

Even if America continues to avoid entangle- 
ment in the war it is probable that there will 
be some slackening of the legislative pace. 
Almost all the more important measures fore- 
shadowed in the Democratic programme of 19 12 
have been converted into laws, and concentra- 
tion on administration is now more needed than 
a high legislative output. A number of new 
administrative instruments — a Federal Reserve 
Board, a Federal Trade Board, a Federal Farm 
Loan Board, a Tariff Commission, a Shipping 
Commission — have been set to work, and exist- 
ing agencies, like the Inter-State Commerce Com- 
mission, are having new powers conferred upon 
them. Acts have already been passed providing 
for naval construction and Army development for 
some years ahead. What is needed now is that 
the working of these agencies and schemes shoyld 



248 PRESIDENT WILSON 

be closely observed and where requisite directed 
and readjusted. That process may entail legis- 
lation, but no such concentration on lawmaking 
as marked the four years 191 3-17 appears to be 
in prospect. 

In the sphere of party politics the position is 
interesting and uncertain. Mr. Gladstone, in a 
mornent of aberration, once declared that Jeffer- 
son Davis had succeeded in making a nation. 
With far greater truth it may be affirmed that 
President Wilson has succeeded in making — or, 
at the least, remaking — a party. The Democrats, 
through the personal force of a leader who owed 
nothing to the favour of bosses or command of 
party machinery, have in the last four years 
become once more a living force in Federal politics 
in America. But while it is certain that Mr. Wilson 
has remade his party, it is by no means clear 
what he has remade it into. If Democrats have 
stood for anything in the past, they have stood 
for the rights of the States against the Federal 
Government. Yet there has never been an 
administration at Washington that can compare 
with President Wilson's in its record of legisla- 
tion calculated to strengthen the Federal Govern- 
ment at the expense of the States . The legislation 
has been uniformly beneficial, and the Democrats 
have given its initiator their loyal support 
throughout. But it remains a fact that the party 
whose main plank in the past has been local 
autonomy has for four effective years been 
devoting its energies to translating into action the 
principle of centralization. 



THE FUTURE ^2749 

What effect will such a tendency have on the 
alignment of parties? That depends in part on 
the future of the Progressives. At present it is 
still uncertain whether they will preserve their 
separate identity or merge themselves once more 
with the Republicans from whom they sprang. 
And they need not necessarily do either. An 
effort is being made to maintain the individuality 
of the party. Whether it succeeds or fails, the 
Progressives will have to decide whether they 
have more in common with the conservatism of 
the Republicans or with the radicalism of the 
Democrats . In the East they will almost certainly 
adhere to the Republicans, but in the West that 
is by no means so inevitable. In 191 6 Mr. 
Wilson's majority clearly included a consider- 
able Progressive vote in States like California, 
and more astonishing developments are possible 
than the successful candidature at the Presidential 
election of 1920 of a politician of the type of 
Governor Hiram Johnson, running as a Progres- 
sive-Democrat on a programme of social reform. 

That, however, is purely hypothetic specula- 
tion. Many things may happen, in America and 
out of it, before 1920. What is certain is that 
the West, where the Progressives are strongest, is 
going from this time on to play a new part in 
American political life. It elected Mr. Wilson 
in 191 6, and it will elect more Presidents after 
him. From the days of Washington onwards the 
centre of political gravity in America has been 
steadily moving westwards. The same impulse 
that drove the P.resident's grandfather, James 



25b PRESIDENT WILSON 

Wilson, from Philadelphia across Pennsylvania 
into Ohio a century ago has in the intervening 
decades been driving millions of his fellow- 
countrymen across the Alleghanies, across the 
Mississippi, across the Rockies, across the Sierras, 
to the undiscovered and undeveloped lands of 
the Far West. That great migration has reached 
its geographical limit on the shores of the Pacific, 
but its political limit is still unattained. The 
broad States beyond the Missouri are as yet thinly 
peopled, but for generations to come every suc- 
cessive census will add to their representation in 
the House, and therefore to their Presidential 
vote. 

No man in America has been more sensible 
than the President of the new meaning of the 
West. It was not till the tide of migration had 
swept forward over what is now termed the 
Middle West, he had told a New Jersey audience 
as long ago as 1895, that the type of the true 
American had been evolved. "The West," he 
declared, " is the great word of our history. The 
Westerner has been the type and master of our 
American life." The twenty odd years that have 
passed since those words were spoken have given 
them a new force. The West has become a 
factor that cannot be ignored. It is no mere 
extension and development of the East. It is 
essentially different in character. There is a 
strain of natural and vigorous democracy running 
through the Western States peculiar to men whose 
life is spent in a free air and amid wide spaces, 
who till their own land and call no man master. 



THE FUTURE '251 

- All through American history," says a pro- 
fessor of a Western University,' '-democracy has 
been like a trade wind, blowing ever from the 
sunset." And speaking of an area no farther 
from New England than the basin of America's 
great river-highway he writes : -- By its 
geographical position the Mississippi Valley 
escapes the temptation to look constantly across 
the water and model itself upon Old -World, 
especially English, patterns. Screened in a 
measure from the sapping' seductiveness of foreign 
example, it seems destined to be the most 
American part of our country. Moreover, growth 
in wealth, prestige, and political power will lend 
it courage to break away from Eastern example 
and be itself." 2 

What the West will be when its broad plains 
are populated, and the city population increasingly 
outnumbers the rural, the future will disclose. 
To-day it is the home of a robust, if restrained, 
radicalism, a fertile seed-bed for Mr. Bryan's 
idealist pacifism, and the main factor in the 
renewal of Mr. Wilson's commission. Its de- 
velopment will affect more than America's 
domestic politics. Now and henceforward the 
New England peoples whose eyes turn across the 
Atlantic to Europe must reckon with another 
people, of the same citizenship but with a different 
orientation, three thousand miles across the con- 
tinent, whose ships furrow the Pacific and whose 
ties will be with the awakening nations of Asia, 

' Prof. E. A. Ross of Wisconsin, in Chatiging America. 
» Ibid, 



55':? PRESIDENT WILSON 

There is peril as well as hope in that prospect. 
But its full realization would give America a 
function such as no nation has ever exercised as 
interpreter and mediator between the Eastern and 
the Western worlds. 

President Wilson's consciousness of the poten- 
tialities of the West bears a relation, direct if not 
at once apparent, to his belief in the possibility 
of an international guarantee of peace. The pro- 
motion of an org^anization directed towards that 
end — whether under the name of a League to 
Enforce Peace or any other— is the highest and 
the greatest work he has set before him. The 
whole of his foreign policy has been influenced 
by that dominant purpose. He has laboured at 
America's practical contribution to such a League, 
by promoting the adoption of the numerous 
" cooling-off " treaties,! and he has gone far to 
banish the danger of war from the American 
continent by his assurances and proposals to the 
Latin -American Republics. He repelled the idea 
of entanglement in the European War, and com- 
mitted himself to a formidable programme of 
preparedness, in order that America might be 
able to contribute to a future League of Nations 
the mediating influence attaching to a neutral 
among belligerents, and the material force on 
which the efficacy of such an organized con- 
stabulary must for a time depend. The President 
may have been quixotic. He may have been 
misguided. He may have been guilty of sacri- 
ficing his country's prestige beyond justification. 
,'^See p. 152. 



THE FUTURE [2 $3 

But at least he was moving towards a definite 
objective, and an objective so pregnant with 
beneficent possibilities for humanity that if ever 
his hopes were realized his part in the work of 
establishing peace would give him an imperish- 
able name among the handful of men whose 
efforts have lifted the world to new moral 
levels. 

This is not the time to idealize President 
Wilson. He is in the midst of his work, and 
he cannot be judged by it till he has succeeded 
or failed in carrying it through. He has had 
the interim reward of being sent back by his 
countrymen to finish what he has begun, and he 
has no title to ask more of them or of mankind 
yet than that his endeavours should be given free 
scope, and that both appreciative and adverse 
critics should for a while suspend their verdicts. 
That does not mean that there is no place for 
sober judgments on so much of a political career 
as is already part of history. It has been the 
aim of the present writer to provide a basis for; 
such judgments. If this volume has been worth 
writing at all, it is because a plain record of a 
man's concrete actions through sixteen years of 
public, and six of definitely political, life affords 
a surer revelation of his principles and aims 
than the most acute and detailed psychological 
analysis . 

President Wilson has not yet discarded, it may 
be that he never will discard, a certain academic 
chill that limits his personal appeal to the. 
multitude, as compared, for example, with Mr. 



:254 l^RESIDENt WILSON 

Roosevelt's. It is something of the same con- 
trast seen in English politics between such men 
as Mr. Asquith and Mr. Lloyd George— though 
that comparison must not be carried beyond 
the point it is cited to illustrate. But whatever 
else Woodrow Wilson will stand for in history, 
posterity will look back to him as the exponent 
of a great political creed. No statesman living 
to-day has more consistently^ more resolutely, or 
with deeper conviction applied in the government 
of a great commonwealth the lessons of a dis- 
cerning, a sober, and a constructive liberalism. 
If his possible influence on the future is to be 
rightly gauged, it must be estimated in the light 
of his unconcealed aspiration to promote the 
application to the government of the world of the 
principles he has for four years applied to 
the government of America. 

" I hope and believe," he said in his address 
to the Senate on the conditirons of a world peace, 
'* that I am in effect speaking for liberals and 
friends of humanity in every nation and of every 
programme of liberty. I would fain believe that 
I am speaking for the silent mass of mankind 
everywhere who have yet had no place or oppor- 
tunity to speak their real hearts out." Such 
words, in the President's mouth, call for a wider 
interpretation than the special circumstances 
attending their utterance suggest. They betoken 
an unashamed idealism— and idealists in high 
places have in the course of history done as much 
to retard as to promote the progress of mankind. 
Mr. Wilson has four clea.r years in which to 



THE FUTURE 25$ 

justify his aims. By the time he takes his final 
leave of the White House we shall be better 
able than we are to-day to foreshadow the per- 
manent verdict of history on his exercise of 
power. 



APPENDIX 

AMERICA AND WORLD-POLITICS 

The fullest expression of President Wilson's 
conception of the future role of the United States 
in international politics is to be found in his 
address to the Senate on January 21, 191 7, and 
his second Inaugural on March 5, 191 7. Speak- 
ing, in the one case to the assembly particularly 
associated with him by the Constitution and by 
usage in the direction of foreign policy, and in 
the other to the nation as a whole, the President 
enunciated principles whose acceptance would in- 
volve, in some respects the profound modification, 
in others the complete supersession, of the Monroe 
Doctrine. 

The new policy thus unfolded had been fore- 
shadovv'ed in Mr. Wilson's declarations on the 
proposed League to Enforce Peace and in his 
address to the Pan-American Scientific Conference 
in January 191 6, but it had never before been 
worked out in all its fullness ,- in the light of 
the lessons of the European War. A leader who 
called on America to abandon frankly and irre- 
vocably the detachment and isolation that for 
ninety years had been the comer -stone of her 
foreign policy was making heavy demands on 

17 a57 



258 APPENDIX 

the loyalty of his followers. But there can be 
little question that the demand will be met, and 
that those who to-day are charging the President 
with embarking on perilous adventures will to- 
morrow be the first to acknowledge his prescience. 
The two addresses in f-ull are here subjoined. 



THE SPEECH TO THE SENATE. 

'• Gentlemen of the Senate,— 

On the 1 8th of December last I 
addressed an identic Note to the Governments 
of the nations now at war requesting them to 
state, more definitely than they had yet been 
by either group of belligerents, the terms upon 
which they would deem it possible to make peace. 
" I spoke on behalf of humanity and of the 
rights of all neutral nations like our own, many 
of whose most vital interests the war puts in 
constant jeopardy. 

" The Central Powers united in a reply which 
stated merely that they were ready to meet their 
antagonists in conference to discuss terms of 
peace. 

" The Entente Powers have replied m.uch more 
definitely, and have stated, in general terms 
indeed, but with sufficient definiteness to imply 
details, the arrangements, guarantees, and acts 
of reparation which they deem to be the indis- 
pensable conditions of a satisfactory settlement. 
*' We are much nearer a definite discussion of 
the peace which shall end the present war. We 
are that much nearer the discussion of the inter- 
national concert which must thereafter hold the 
world at peace. In every discussion of the peace 



AMERICA AND WORLD -POLITICS 259 

that must end this war it is taken for granted 
that peace must be followed by a definite concert 
of the Powers which will make it virtually im- 
possible that any such catastrophe should ever 
overwhelm us again. Every lover of manldnd, 
every sane and thoughtful man, must take that 
for granted. 

" I have sought this opportunity to address 
you because I thought that I owed it to you, as 
the council associated with me in the final deter- 
mination of our international obligations, to dis- 
close to you without reserve the thought and 
purp>ose that have been taking form in my mind 
with regard to the duty of our Government in 
the days to come, when it will be necessary to 
lay afresh and upon a new plan the foundations 
of peace among the nations. 

" It is inconceivable that the people of the 
United States should play no j>art in that great 
enterprise. To take part in such a service will 
be the opportunity for which they have sought 
to prepare themselves by the very principles and 
purposes of their polity and the approved prac- 
tices of their Government ever since the days 
when they set up a new nation in the high and 
honourable hope that it might in ail that it was 
and did show mankind the way to liberty. They 
cannot in honour withhold the service to which' 
they are now about to be challenged. They do 
not wish to withhold it. But they owe it to 
themselves and to the other nations of the world 
to state the conditions under which they will 
feel free to render it. 

" That service is nothing less than this : To 

1 add their authority and their power to the 

I authority and force of other nations to guarantee 

peace and justice throughout the world. Such 

a settlement cannot now be lonig postponed. It 



2 6o APPENDIX 

is riglit that before it comes this Government 
should frankly formuliite the conditions upon 
which it would feel justified in asking our people 
to approve its formal and solemn adherence to 
a league for peace, I am here to attempt to 
state those conditions. 

" The present war must first be ended, but 
we owe it to candour and to a just regard for 
the opinion of mankind to say that, so far as 
our participation in guar^mtces of future peace 
is concerned, it makes a great deal of difference 
in what way and upon what terms it is ended. 

" The treaties and agreements which bring it 
to an end must embody terms that will create a 
peace that is worth guaranteeing and preserving, 
a peace that will win the approval of mankind, 
not merely a peace that will serve the several 
interests and immediate aims of the nations 
engaged. 

" We shall have no voice in determining what 
those terms shall be, but we shall, I feel sure, 
have a voice in determining whether they shall 
be made lasting or not by the guarantees of a 
universal covenant; and our judgment upon what 
is fundamental and essential as a condition prece- 
dent to permanency should be spoken now, not 
aiterwards, when it may be too late. 

" No covenant of co-operative peace that does 
not include the peoples of the New World ran 
suffice to keep the future safe against war; and 
yet there is only one sort of peace that the 
peoples of America could join in guaranteeing. 
The elements of that peace must be elements 
that engage the confidence and satisfy the prin- 
ciples of the American Government, elements con- 
sistent with the political faith and the practical 
convictions which the peoples of America have 
once for alj embraced and undertaken to defend. 



AMERICA AND WORLD -POLITICS 261 

"I do not mean to say that any American 
Government would throw any obstacle in the way 
of any terms of peace the Governments now at 
war might agree upon, or seek to upset them 
when made, whatever they might be. I only 
take it for granted that mere terms of peace 
between the belligerents will not satisfy even the 
belligerents themselves. Mere agreements may 
not make peace secure. 

" It will be absolutely necessary that a force 
be created as a guarantor of the permanency of ! 
the settlement so much greater than the force 1 
of any nation now engaged or any alliance 
hitherto formed or projected, that no nation, no 
probable combination of nations, could face or 
withstand it. If the peace presently to be made' 
is to endure, it must be a peace made secure 
by the organized major force of mankind. 

" The terms of the immediate peace agreed 
upon will determine whether it is a peace for 
which such a guarantee can be secured. The 
question upon which the whole future peace and 
policy of the world depends is this : Is the 
present a struggle for a just and secure peace 
or only for a neW~balance of power? TF^Tt be^ 
only a struggle for a new balance of power, 
who will guarantee, who can guarantee the stable 
equilibrium of the new arrangement ? Only a 
tranquil Europe can be a stable Europe. There 
must be, not a balance of power, but a com-_ 
ji iunity of powe r ; not organized rivalries, l)ut an 
qrganized_common peace. 

"TTortunately, we have received very explicit 
assurances on this point. 

" The statesmen of both of the groups of 
nations now arrayed against one another have 
said, in terms that could not be misinterpreted, 
that it was no part of the purpose they had in 



262 APPENDIX 

mind to crush their antagonists. But the 
implications of these assurances may not be 
equally clear to all — may not be the same on 
both sides of the water. I think it will be 
serviceable if I attempt to set forth what we 
understand them to be. 

" They imply, first of all, that it must be a 
peace without victory. 

" I beg that I may be permitted to put my 
own interpretation upon it, and that it may be 
understood that no other interpretation was in 
my thought. I am seeking only to face realities, 
and to face them without soft concealments. 

" Victory would mean peace forced upon the 
loser, a victor's terms imposed upon the 
vanquished. It would be accepted in humilia- 
tion, under duress, at intolerable sacrifice, and 
would leave a sting, a resentment, a bitter 
memory upon which terms of peace would rest, 
not permanently, but only as upon quicksand. 
Only a peace between equals can last — only a 
peace the very principle of which is equality and 
a common participation in a common benefit. 
The right state of mind, the right feeling between 
nations is as necessary for a lasting peace as is 
the just settlement of vexed questions of territory 
or of racial and national allegiance. 

" The equality of nations upon which peace 
must be founded, if ii is to last, must be an 
equality of rights ; the guarantees exchanged 
must neither recognize nor imply a difference 
between big nations and small,, between those 
that are powerful and those that are weak. Right 
must be based upon the common strength, not 
upon the individual strength, of the nations upon 
whose concert peace will depend. 

" Equality of territory or of resources there, 
of course, cannot be, nor any sort of equality 



AMERICA AND WORLD-POLITICS 263 

not gained in the ordinary peaceful and legiti- 
mate development of the peoples themselves . But 
no one asks or expects anything more than an 
equality of rights. Mankind is looking now for^' 
freedom of life, not for equipoises of power. / 

" And there is a deeper thing involved than 
even equality of right among organized nations. 

" No peace can last, or ought to last, which 
does not recognize and accept the principle that 
Governments derive all their just powers from 
the consent of the governed, and that no right 
anywhere exists to hand peoples about from 
potentate to potentate as if they were property. 

" I take it for granted, for instance, if I may 
venture upon a single example, that statesmen 
everywhere are agreed that there should be a 
united, independent, and autonomous Poland, and 
that henceforth inviolable security of life, of 
worship, and of industrial and social development 
should be guaranteed to all peoples who have 
lived hitherto under the power of Governments 
devoted to a faith and purpose hostile to 
their own. 

" I speak of this, not because of any desire 
to exalt an abstract political principle which has 
always been held very dear by those who have 
sought to build up liberty in America, but for 
the same reason that I have spoken of the other 
conditions of peace which seem to me clearly 
indispensable — because I wish frankly to uncover 
realities . 

" Any peace which does not recognize and 
accept this principle will inevitably be upset. It 
will not rest upon the affections or the convic- 
tions of mankind. The ferment of spirit of whole 
populations will fight subtly and constantly 
against it, and all the world will sympathize. The 
world can be at peace only if its life is stable, 



264 APPENDIX 

and there can be no stability where the will is 
in rebellion, where there is not tranquilUty of 
spirit and a sense of justice, of freedom, and of 
right. 

" So far as practicable, moreover, every great 
people now struggling towaj-ds a full development 
of its resources and of its powers sjhould be 
assured a direct outlet to the great highways of 
the seas. 

" Where this cannot be done by the cession 
of territory, it no doubt can be done by the 
neutralization of direct rights of way under the 
general guarantee which v^U assure the peace 
itself. With a right comity of arrangement no 
nation need be shut away from free access to 
the open paths of the world's commerce. 

" And the paths of the sea must alike in law 
and in fact be free. The freedom of the seas 
is the sine qua noii of peace, equality, and 
co-operation. 

" No doubt a somewhat radical reconsidera- 
tion of many of the rules of international prac- 
tice hitherto thought to be established may be 
necessary in order to make the seas indeed free 
and common in practically all circumstances for 
the use of mankind; but the motive for such 
changes is convincing and compelling. There 
can be no trust or intimacy between the peoples 
of the world without them. The free, constant, 
unthreatened intercourse of nations is an essen- 
tial part of the process of peace and of develop- 
ment. It need not be difficult either to define 
or to secure the freedom of the seas if the 
Governments of the world sincerely desire to 
come to an agreement concerning it. 

"It is a problem closely connected with the 
limitation of naval armaments and the co-opera- 
tion of the navies of the world in keeping the 



AMERICA AND WORLD-POLITICS 265 

seas at once free and safe, and the question of 
limiting naval armaments opens the wider, and 
perhaps more difficult, question of the limitation 
of armies and of all programmes of military- 
preparation. Difficult and delicate as these ques- 
tions are, they must be faced with the utmost 
candour and decided in a spirit of real accom- 
modation, if peace is to come with healing in 
its wings, and come to stay. Peace cannot be 
had without concession and sacrifice. 

"There can be no sense of safety and equality 
among the nations if great and preponderating 
armaments are henceforth to continue here and 
there to be built up and maintained. The 
statesmen of the world must plan for peace and 
nations must adjust and accommodate their policy 
to it as they have planned for war and made 
ready for pitiless contest and rivalry. 

" The question of armaments, whether on land 
or on sea, is the most immediately and intensely 
practical question connected with the future 
fortunes of nations and of mankind. 

" I have spoken upon these great matters 
without reserve and with the utmost explicitness, 
because it has seemed to me to be necessary if 
the world's yearning for peace was anywhere to 
find free voice and utterance. 

" Perhaps I am the only person in high 
authority amongst all the peoples of the world 
who is at liberty to speak and hold nothing back. 
I am speaking as an individual, and yet I am 
speaking also, of course, as the responsible head 
of a great Government, and I feel confident that 
I have said what the people of the United States 
would wish me to say. 

" May I not add that I hope and believe that 
I am in elTect speaking for liberals and friends 
of humanity in every nation and of every 



266 APPENDIX 

programme of liberty ? I would fain believe that 
I am speaking for the silent mass of mankind 
everywhere who have yet had no place or oppor- 
tunity to s|>eak their real hearts out concerning 
the death and ruin they see to have come already 
upon the persons and the homes they hold 
most dear. 

" And in holding out the expectation that the 
people and Government of the United States will 
join the other civilized nations of the world in 
guaranteeing the perm^anence of peace uj>on such 
terms as I have named I speak with the greater 
boldness and confidence because it is clear to 
every man who can think that there is in this 
promise no breach in either our traditions or our 
policy as a nation, but a fulfilment, rather, of all 
that we have professed or striven for. 

" I am proposing, as it were, that the nations 
should with one accord adopt the doctrine of 
President Monroe as the doctrine of the world : 
that no nation should seek to extend its polity 
over any other nation or people, but that every 
people should be left free to determine its own 
polity, its own way of development, unhindered, 
unthreatened, unafraid, the little along with the 
great and powerful. 

" I am proposing that all nations henceforth 
avoid entangling alliances which would draw 
them into competitions of power, catch them in 
a net of intrigue and selfish rivalry, and disturb 
their own affairs with influences intruded from 
without. There is no entangling alliance in a 
concert of power. When all unite to act in 
the same sense and with the same purpose all 
act in common interest and are free to live their 
own lives under a common protection. 

" I am proposing government by the consent 
of the governed ; tliat freedom of the seas which 



AMERICA AND WORLD-POLITICS 267 

in international conference after conference repre- 
sentatives of the people of the United States have 
urged with the eloquence of those who are the 
convinced disciples of liberty ; and that modera- 
tion of armaments which makes of armies and 
navies a power for order merely, not an instru- 
ment of aggression or of selfish violence. 

" These are American principles, American, 
policies. We could stand for no others. And 
yet they are the principles and policies of forward- 
looking men and women everywhere, of every 
modern nation, of every enlightened community. 
They are the principles of mankind and must 
prevail." 



THE SECOND INAUGURAL. 

" My Fellow-Citizens,— 

The four years which have elapsed since 
last I stood in this place have been crowded 
with counsel and action of the most vital interest 
and consequences. Perhaps no equal period in 
our history has been so fruitful in important 
reforms in our economic and industrial life, or 
so full of significant changes in the spirit and 
purpose of our political action. We have sought 
very thoughtfully to set those in order, to correct 
the grosser errors and abuses of our industrial 
life, to liberate and quicken the processes of 
national genius and energy, and to lift politics 
to a broader view of the people's essential inter- 
ests. It is a record of singular variety and 
singular distinction, but I shall not attempt to 
review it. It speaks for itself, and will be of 
increasing influence as the years go by. 

" This is not the time for retrospect. It is a 



268 APPENDIX 

time rather to speak over thoughts and purposes 
concerning the present and the immediate future. 
Ahhough we have centred counsel and action 
with such unusual concentration and success upon 
the great problems of domestic legislation to 
which we addressed ourselves four years ago, 
other matters have more and more forced them- 
selves upon our attention, matters lying outside 
our own life as a nation and over which we 
have had no control, but which, despite our wish 
to keep free of them, have drawn us more 
and more irresistibly into their own current and 
influence. It has been impossible to avoid them. 
They have affected the life of the whole world 
and shaken men everywhere with passion and 
apprehension which they never knew before. It 
has been hard to preserve calm counsel while 
the thought of our own people has been swayed 
this way and that under their influence. 

" We are a composite and cosmopolitan people, 
we are of the brood of all the nations that are at 
war, the currents of our thoughts as well as the 
currents of our trade run quick at all seasons 
back and forth between us and them. The war 
has inevitably set its mark from the first alike 
upon our minds, our industries, our commerce, 
our politics, our social action. To be indifferent 
to it or independent of it was out of the question. 
Yet all the while we have been conscious that 
we are not a part of it, and in that consciousness, 
in spite of many divisions, we have been drawn 
closer together. 

" We have been deeply wronged upon the seas> 
but we have not wished to wrong or injure in 
return, and have retained throughout the con- 
sciousness of standing in some sort apart, intent 
upon an interest that transcended the immediate 
issues of the war itself. As some of the injuries 



AMERICA AND WORLD-POLiTICS 269 

done to us have become intolerable we have 
still beea clear that we wished nothing for cmr- 
selves that we were not ready to demand for 
all mankind — fair dealing, justice, and freedom 
to live and be at ease against organized wrong. 
It is in this spirit and with this thought that 
we have grown more and more aware and more 
and more certain that the part we wished to play 
was the part of those who mean to vindicate and 
fortify peace. 

" We have been obliged to arm ourselves to 
make good our claim to a certain minimum of 
right and freedom of action. We stand firm 
in an armed neutrality, since it seems that in 
no other way we can demonstrate what it is that 
we insist upon and cannot forgo. We may 
even be drawn on by circumstances, not by our 
own purpose or desire, to an active reassertion 
of our rights as we see them, and to more imme- 
diate association in the great struggle itself, but 
nothing will alter our thought or our purpose. 
They are too clear to be obscured. They are 
too deeply rooted in the principles of our national 
life to be altered. 

"We desire neither conquest nor advantage; 
we wish nothing that can be had only at the 
cost of another people. We have always pro- 
fessed an unselfish purpose, and we covet the 
opportunity to prove that our professions are 
sincere. There are many things still to do at 
home to clarify our own politics, and to add 
new vitality to the industrial processes of our 
ov/n life, and we shall do them as time and 
opportunity serve ; but v^e realize that the greatest 
things that remain to be done must be done with 
the whole world for a stage, and in co-operation 
with the wide universal forces of mankind, and 
we are making our spirits ready for those things. 



270 APPENDIX 

They will follow ia the immediate wake of the. 
war itself, and set civilization up again. 

" We are provincials no longer. The tragical 
events of thirty months of vital turmoil through 
which we have just passed have made us citizens 
of the world. There can be no turning back. 
Our own fortunes as a nation are involved 
whether we would have it so or not, and yet 
we are not the less Americans if we but remain 
true to the principles in which we have been bred. 
They are not the principles of a province or of 
a single continent. We have known and boasted 
all along that they were the principles of liberated 
mankind. 

" These, therefore, are the things we shall 
stand for, whether in war or peace : that all 
nations are equally interested in the peace of the 
world and in the political stability of free peoples, 
and are equally responsible for their maintenance ; 
that the essential principle of peace is the actual 
equality of all nations in all matters of right or 
privilege ; that peace cannot securely or justly 
rest upon an armed balance of power, that Govern- 
ments derive all their just powers from the con- 
sent of the governed, and that no other Powers 
should be supported by the common thought, 
purpose, or powers of the family of nations ; that 
the seas should be equally free and safe for the 
use of all peoples under rules set up by common 
agreement and consent, and that so far as is 
practicable they should be accessible to all upon 
equal terms ; that national armaments should be 
limited to the necessities of national order and 
domestic safety ; that the community of interest 
and power upon which peace will henceforth 
depend imposes upon each nation the duty of 
seeing to it that all influences proceeding from 
its own citizens meant to encourage or assist 



AMERICA AND WORLD-POLITICS 271 

revolution in other States should be sternly and 
effectually suppressed and prevented, 

" I need not argue these principles to you, my 
fellow-countrymen. They are your own — part and 
parcel of your own thinking, of your own motive 
in affairs. They spring up native amongst us. 
Upon this, as upon a platform of purpose and 
action, we can stand together, and it is impera- 
tive that we should stand together. 

" We are being forced into a new unity amidst 
fires that now blaze throughout the world. In 
their ardent heat we shall in God's providence, 
let us hope, be purged of faction and division, 
purified of errant humours of party and private 
interest, and stand forth in the days to come with 
new dignity of national pride and spirit. Let 
each man see to it that the dedication is in his 
own heart, that the high purpose of the nation 
is in his own mind, that he is ruler of his own 
will and desire. 

" I stand here and have taken the high solemn 
oath to which you have been audience because 
the people of the United States have chosen me 
for this auguct delegation of power, and by their 
gracious judgment have named me their leader 
in affairs. I know now what the task means. 
I realize to the full the responsibility which it 
involves. I pray God that I be given wisdom 
and prudence to do my duty in the true spirit 
of this great people. I am their servant, and 
can succeed only as they sustain and guide me 
by their confidence and their counsel. 

" The thing I shall count upon and the thing 
without which neither counsel nor action avail 
is the unity of America — an America united in 
feeling, in purpH3se, in its vision of duty and its 
opportunity of service. We have to beware of 
all men who would turn the tasks and necessities 



272 APPENDIX 

of the nation to their ovvn private profit or use 
them for the upbuilding of private pMDwer, 

" Beware that no faction or disloyal intrigue 
break the harmony lor embarrass the spirit of 
our people. Beware that our Government be kept 
pure and incorrupt in all its parts. United alike 
in the conception of our duty and in the high 
resolve to perform it in face of all men, let us 
dedicate ourselves to the great task to which 
we must now set our hand. For myself I beg 
your tolerance, your countenance, your united aid. 

*' The shadows that now lie dark upon our 
path will soon be dispelled. We shall walk with 
light all about us if we be but true to ourselves 
— to ourselves as we have wished to be known 
in the counsels of the world, in the thought of 
all those who love liberty, justice, and right 
exalted." 



INDEX 



A. B. C. Powers, 123, 126 

Adams, John, 97 

Adams, J. Q.,68 

Adamson Act, 217, 223 

Aguas Calientes, 125 

Allied Powers, 178, 183, 191, 232 

American Constitution, 74,97, 211 

American Federation of Labour, 

217, 220, 226 
American Fedcrationisf, 226 
American People, History of, 29 
American Truth Society, 234 
Anti-Trust Laws, 70, 73, 95, 108 
Arabic, s.s., 165, i68-g, 171, 195 
Arbitration, 141 
Argentina, 123, 138 
Arizona, 129 

Arms, Embargo on, 116, 119, 121 
Army, U.S., 193, 197-8, 200-2 
Asquith, H. H,, 177, 178, 254 
Atlanta, 20, 31 
Atlantic Monthly, 107, 120 
Atlantic Ocean, 251 
Augusta, 15 
Aurora, 13 
Austria, 134, 170 
Austro-Hungarians, 155 
Axson, Miss E. L., 27 

Bagehot, Walter, 20 

Baker, Newton D., 201 

Banks, 105-8 

Belgium, 159, 160, 190 

Benson, A. J., 239 

Bernstorff, Count, 168-9, 17I) 185 



Bethmann-HoUweg, Dr. von, 209 
" Big Business," 109 
Billow Papers, 114 
Bingham, Hiram, 139 
Black List, 164 
Blockade, 159, 161, 162 
Bolivia, 126 

Boiling Miss Edith, 27 
Borah, Senator, 228 
Boy-Ed, Captain, 170, 195 
Brailsford, H. N., 208 
Brazil, 123, 138, 139 
British Empire, 142 
Brotherhoods, Railway, 220, 221 
Bryan, W. J., 65, 71, 72, 79, 117, 
122, 147, 148, 167, 198, 209, 233, 

251 
Bryce, Viscount, 28, 30, 159, 246 
Bryn Mawr, 24, 27 
Buchanan, President, 79, 80 
Buenos Aires, 107, 139 

Cabinet, 98 

Cabinet Government, 22 

California, 148, 149, 238, 240, 241, 

249 
Canada, 156, 193 
Canning, 134 

Carbajal, Francisco, 124, 125 
Carnegie, Andrew, 26 
Carranza, 119, 120, 121, 123, 124, 

125, 127-30 
Carrizal, 129 
Caucus, 98 

Chase, Salmon P., 102 
18 ^73 



2;.4 



INDEX 



Chicago, Ti, 201, 227, 244 

Chihuahua, 127, 129, 130 

Child labour, 2i8, 219 

Chile, 123 

Chillicothe, 13 

China, 144 

Civil War, 15, 102 

Clark, Champ, 65, 71 

Clay, Henry, 68 

Clayton Act, iii, 216, 226 

Cleveland, President, 79, 135, 238 

Cliosophic, the, 22 

Clubs, Students', 37 

Coastwise shipping, 144 

Colombia, 85, 146, 147, 151 

Colorado, 215 

Columbia (South Carolina), 17, 18 

Columbus (New Mexico), 127 

Combinations, 60, 91, 108 

Commission government, 59 

Commons, House of, 20 

Congressional Government, 24, 28 

Conscription, 202 

Constitutional Government, 29, 65 

Continental Army, 200, 201 

Conventions, Party, 70, 75, 227, 

229 
" Cooling-off " treaties, 151, 152 
Corporation rule, 93 
Corporations, Regulation of, 57 
Corruption, 48, 49 
Costa Rica, 140 
Credit, 205 
Cuba, 85, 136, 149 
. Cummins, Senator, 228 
Currency Bill, 73, 102-7 

Danish West Indies, 148 
Davidson College, 17 
Davis, Jefferson, 16, 248 
Debs, Eugene, 76 
Declaration of London, 161 
Democracy, 47 
Dernburg, Herr, 169 



Derry, J. T., 17 

Detroit, 157 

Diaz, Felix, 119 

Diaz, Porfirio, 86, 114, 131 

Division and Reunion, 29 

Dumba, Dr., 170, 195 

Edison, T, A., 196, 201, 233 

Edwards, Jonathan, 19 

Eight-hours day, 221, 222-5 

Election of 1912, 65-77 

Election of 1916, 48, 227-43 

Electoral College, 74 

Eliot, Dr. C. W., 107, 120 

El Paso, 129 

Emery, Piof. H. C, 92 

Employers' Liability, 57, 214 

Entente Powers, 127, 155 

Europe, 135, 251 

European War, 6, 107, 113, 137, 

138, 153-87, 189, 190. 192, 194) 

215. 231 

Fairbanks, Ex-Senator, 228 
Federal Child Labour Act, 218, 219 
Federal Farm Loan Act, 218 
Federal Land Banks, 218 
Federal Reserve Bank, 105, 106 
Federal Reserve Board, 106, 107 

186, 205,218, 247 
Federal Trade Commission, no- 

12, 247 
Federalists, 67 
Ford, Henry, 157, 198, 233 
Foreign policy, 133-52 
France, 156, 161 
Franklin, Benjamin, 14 
Fraternities, 37 
Free Trade, 22, 31 
Fremont, General, 68 
Funston, General, 129 

Gait, Mrs. Norman, 27 
Garfield, President, 16 



INDEX 



275 



Garrison, Lindley M., 200, 201 

Gentleman's Magazine, 20 

George, D. Lloyd, 103, 154 

George Washington, 29 

Geran Bill, 56, 57 

Gerard.T. W., .185 

Germany, 138, 139, 140, 155, 161- 

9, 170-6, 178, 180-2, 185-6 
Gladstone, W. E., 248 
Glass, Carter, 105 
Gompers, Samuel, 217, 226 
Graduate School, 39 
Great Britain, 135, 155, 161, 162, 

164, 165, 191, 207 
Grey, Viscount (Sir Edward), 144, 

163, 164, 209 
Guatemala, 126, 140 

Hague Conventions, 159 

Hale, W. B., 73 

Hamilton, Alexander, 67 

Harvey, Col., 65 

Hay-Pauncefote Treaty, 144 

Hayti, 138 

Hesperian, S.S., 165, 169, 171 

Holy Alliance, 134 

House of Commons, 20 

Huerta, Victoriano, 117, 120-4, 153 

Hughes, Charles Evans, 228, 229, 

230, 233, 235-42 
Hyphenated, 171, 232 

Illinois, 235, 236, 239, 240 
Immigration, 148, 149 
Inaugural Address, 78, 267 
Income-tax, 70, 100 
Indianapolis, 126 
Industrial workers of the world, 

215 
Initiative, 84 

Interlocking directorates, 94, iii 
International Review, 23, 31, 98 
Inter-Slate Commerce Commis- 
sion, III, 221, 222, 224, 247 



Jackson, Andrew, 68, 80, 97, 238 
Japan, 136, 138, 148, 149, 150 
Jefferson, Thomas, 67, 97, 135, 245 
Johns Hopkins, 24 
Johnson, Andrew, 17, 135 
Johnson, Hiram, 240, 241, 249 
Joint Commission (Mexico), 129, 
130 

Kansas, 199 

Knight, E. C, 109, 214 

Labour, 213-26 

Labour boycott, 109, 112 

Labour, Department of, 80 

La Follette, Senator, 83, 217 

Land Banks, 218 

Lane, Franklin K,, 131 

Lansing, Robert, 142, 163, 167, 

171, 172, 181 
Latin America, 131, 134, 140, 143, 

152, 193, 252 
Lawrence, 215 
League of Nations, A, 208 
League to Enforce Peace, 166, 

183, 189, 207, 208-11, 252 
Lincoln, Abraham, 15, 16, 68, 97, 

155, 202 
Lind, Ex-Governor, 121 
Lloyd George, see George. 
Lobbying, 100, loi 
Lodge, Henry Cabot, 107, 122, 

146 
Long Branch, 234 
Lowell, James Russell, 246 
Lucy, Sir Henry, 20 
Lusitania, s.s., 126, 165-7, 169, 

191, 195 
Lynde Debate, 22 
Lyons, Lord, 163 

McAdoo, W. G., 79 
McCombs, William F., 67 
Machine, Party, 41, 53, 89 



276 



INDEX 



Madero, Francisco, 86, 115 

Madison, President, 19 

Maine, 234 

Manhattan Club, 188 

Marina, s.s., 165, 176 

Martine, James E., 51-3 

Mediation (European War), 159 

Mediation Conference (Mexico), 
124 

Merchant shipping, 203 

Merc Literature, 29 

Mexico, 113-32, 135. 136, 138, 
140, 141, 151, 191, 192 

Mexico City, 124, 125 

Middle West, 159, 170, 198, 232, 
235. 239, 250 

Militia, 191, 200, 201, 202 

Milwaukee, 74, 199, 232 

Minnesota, 238 

Mississippi, River, 232, 251 

Missouri, River, 240, 250 

Missouri, Oklahoma, Gulf Rail- 
road, 224 

Money Trust, 94, 102 

Monopoly, 49, 87, 91 

Monroe, Fort, 16 

Monroe, President, 134 

Monroe Doctrine, 114, 115, 133-8, 
155, 157, 184,211 

Morgan directorships, 94 

National Guard, 195, 201 
Nationalization (railroad), 224-5 
Naval Appropriation Bill, 194 
Navy, U.S., 193, 196, 197, 200, 

202, 203 
Nebraskaii, s.s. 168 
New England, 157, 165, 192, 231, 

251 

New Freeflow, the, 28, 73, 83, 95, 

110, 213 
New Hampshire, 239 
New Jersey, 30, 42, 43-64, 213, 
..V234, 240 



New London, 129 

New Mexico, 129 

New Republic, the, 156 

New York, 75, 199, 201, 234, 235 

236 
New York Evening Post, 233 
Netv York Herald, 236 
New York Times, 236 
New York Tribune, 236 
New York World, 131 
Newlands Commission, 224 
Niagara Falls, 124 
Nicaragua, 140, 147 
Notes, 164, 166, 175, 179, 180-2 

Obregon, Gen,, 129 
Old Master, An, 29 
O'Leary, Jeremiah, 234 
Orders in Council, 161 
Oregon, 240 
Outlook, the, 161 

Pacific Ocean, 136, 240, 250 
Pacifism, 232, 251 
Palmer, Congressman, 227 
Panama, 70, 85, 144, 146, 151 
Pan-Americanism, 118, 140-3, 

147, 187, 193, 230 
Papen, Captain von, 170, 195 
Parral, 129 

Parties, Political, 46, 47 
Paterson, 215 
Patton, Dr. F. L., 29 
Pennsylvania, 235, 236, 240 
Pennsylvania Railroad, 93 
Pershing, Gen., 128, 130 
Philippines, 70, 137, 148, 149, 150, 

151, 197 
Pittsburg, 14, 199 
Porto Rico, 85, 137, 149, 197 
Preceptorial system, 36 
Preparedness, 188-212 
Primary, 49, 84 
Princeton, 19-22, 23-42, 213 



INDEX 



277 



Proctor, W. C, 39 
Progressives, 55, 72, 73, 217, 229, 
230, 235, 240, 241, 242, 246, 249 
Prohibition, 243 
Public Utilities Commission, 58 

Railway unrest, 220-4 

Recall, 84 

Reconstruction, 17 

Referendum, 84 

Renick (and Wilson), 20, 23 

Rio Grande, 116, 143 

Roosevelt, T., 72, 74, 76, ^T, 78, 81. 
84, no, 115, 117, 130, 135, 138, 
146, 169, 198, 228-9, 241, 245, 254 

Root, Elihu, 107, 122, 207, 228 

Ross, Prof. E. A., 251 

Rural credits, 70, 108, 218 

Rush, Richard, 134 

Russia, 134 

Russo-Japanese War, 136 

St. Louis, 199, 230 

St. Stephen's, 20 

San Domingo, 85, 116, 135, 138 

Savannah, 16, 27 

Scott, Gen. H. L., 129 

Scott, Winfield, 114 

Seamen's Act, 217 

Seamen's Union, 218 

Senate (New Jersey), 50 

" Seven Sisters," 60 

Sherman Act, io8-io, 216 

Sherman, W. T., 15, 16 

Shipping Act, 203, 204, 230 

Shipping Board, 205, 247 

Smith, James, 49-52 

Social reform, 213-26 

Socialists, 235 

South, the, 15, 235 

South America, 131, 134, 138, I39' 

187, 193 
South Dakota, 240 
Southern Pacific Railroad, 93 



Spain, 134, 150, 155 
Spanish-American War, 130, 136, 

149, 169 
Spoils System, 47 
Standard Oil Company, 109, 215 
State, The, 28 

State, the American, 43, 44 
States rights, 68, 87, 248 
Staunton, 15 
Steubenville, 14 
Stone, Senator, 173 
Strikes, 215, 219-22 
Submarines, 159, 162, 172, 177, 185 
Sumter, Fort, 17 
Supreme Court, 109, 148,215, 216, 

219, 224, 228 
SussiW, s.s., 165, 174, 186 
Swann Bequest, 39 

Taft, William H., 69, 72, 76, 77, 
78, 81, 116, 144, 150, 207, 228, 

245 
Tampico, 121 

Tariff Act (1913), 98-101, 104, 216 
Tariff Commission, loi, 247 
Tariffs, 22,70, 91, 96 
Taussig, Prof., 102 
Taylor, Zachary, 114 
Texas, 114, 129 
Times, The, 157, 237 
Titanic, s.s., 217 
Trade Disputes Act, II2, 216 

Underwood, Oscar, 99, loi, 146 
United States ^Steel Corporation, 

92 » 95 
Universities, American, 30 
Uruguaj', 126 

Venezuela, 135 

Vera~Cru'z7l20, 122, 123, 125, 127, 

153 
Villa, Gen., 119, I2i, 124, 125, 
127, 13Q 



278 



INDEX 



Virginia, 15 

Virginia Bar Association, 54 

Virginia, University of, 20 

Wall Street, 235 

War, Civil, see Civil War, 

War, European, see European 

War. 
Washington, George, 16, 26, 29, 

67, 97, 155 

Wesleyan University, 24 

West, Dr. Andrew, 39 

West, the, 157, 198, 232, 235, 239, 
241, 242, 249-52 

Whig Hall, 22 

Whigs, 68 

Wilmington, 19 

Wilson, James, 13, 249 

Wilson, Joseph Ruggles, 14 

Wilson, W. B., 80 

Wilson, Woodrow, ancestry, 
13 ; birth, 15 ; childhood, 15, 
16 ; education, 17-19 ; enters 
at Princeton, 19 ; practises law 
at Atlanta, 20 ; at Johns Hop- 



kins, 24 ; at Bryn Mawr, 24 ; 
at Wesleyan University, 24 ; 
professor at Princeton, 24 ; 
President of Princeton, 25 ; 
marriage, 27 ; publications, 
28-9 ; Governor of New 
Jersey, 50 ; nominated for 
President, 71 ; elected Presi- 
dent, 76 ; and Mexico, 113-32 ; 
his foreign policy, 133-52 ; 
and the European War, 153- 
87 ; and preparedness, 188- 
206 ; and League to Enforce 
Peace, 207-11 ; and Labour, 
213-26; re-nominated for Presi- 
dent, 230 ; re-elected, 238 ; his 
future, 245-6 

Wisconsin, 251 

Women's Franchise, 230 

Woodrow, Miss Janet, 14 

Woodrow, Rev. Thos., 13 

Wyman, Isaac, 42 

Zapata, General, 115, 119, 121, 
125 



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